Spookisback:
I thought Josh Rourke was pretty good throughout the game... Our ruck speed was far quicker when Smith was on the pitch... We missed MM influence in the middle when he moved to edge forward... I thought that was when Hull started to gain a foot hold in the game... We missed Vangana on the edge... For me Atoni was our best forward on the night... Rodwell looked ok but out of match fitness... Faatili was effective and I was disappointed when he came off as he was bending the Hull defensive line with every carry... We moved the ball wide too early again, offering Hull the chance to take out our wide players... john Stone had his best game of the season... Might have been unlucky, I still can't see where he is on the match footage, replay (maybe I'm just getting old and a bit foggy eyed) ... We were just short in this game, and the reasons we were so was mostly self inflicted... One observation, Pratt got bundled into touch when he should have found the turf, when a similar situation arose in the second half he went straight to ground, good learning and application of learning... We made a couple of silly errors but we also did some really good stuff... Getting over the line 5 times (albeit 3 were disallowed) against a very stubborn and well drilled Hull defence was a real positive.
I agree with nearly all of that apart from the speed of our ruck. I was just listening to the Hertigae podcast and they echoed my thoughts about a couple of things. That when Hood's on we're just a better team and the ruck speed in that first half hour especially was awesome, although we didn't get the points we should have. It was some of the best stuff we've played this season. After the disallowed tries & when Hood went off for me things started to change in that second half and we started to gradually lose control of things and made errors. You could see that the spine of Rourke, Lino, Russell and Smith hadn't played together because when Hull started to get on top through Sezer's kicking game, we looked a bit clueless with the ball, not finishing sets off well, making the wrong plays & making errors and then Hood came back on and Cam Scott scored but it was too little too late. McMeeken moving into SR didn't help things and it again showed what a machine he is for us in the middle but Smith is just a different kind of hooker and doesn't have that experience, physicality and decision-making ability that Hood has at hooker yet but he's still very young. Just to add Pitt's made 50 tackles, beast.
As you mentioned we lacked that extra cutting edge that Vagana gives us in the back row out wider, he offers something different to the other backrowers. Rodwell did probably what was expected of a guy returning from injury but you know he's just gonna get better and better. Griffin, similarly played pretty well but there's room for him to improve. Cam Scott was well guarded by Hull, unsurprisingly, but he did a decent job in his first proper game for Trinity. Similarly, Rourke did well for his first game for us as well, especially with his running game but I think we missed Jowitt's extra play-making abilities especially because lost Trueman. He just brings that extra dimension as a playmaker that good teams all have and he's become an excellent defensive fullback and sorts the defensive line out massively, barking orders out to them. Rourke's different to that, he's much more of a running threat than Max but doesn't have that playmaking ability Max has.
