Problem

for Feilden and others is: he's always right.

Yes he made handling errors on Friday but he made 38 tackles with no misses and 98 metres with the ball.

Only O'Loughlin with 40 tackles made more (in either side)



So did Stu really have that bad of a game?

No.

Agreed.

was speaking to a couple of leeds fans on the way home on friday and they also reckoned he had a shocker



yes , there was a couple of knock ons, how many of those had a bit of help from a leeds hand ?



yes he gave away a penalty or two , thats what happens when you are involved in the thick of it , he didint hide the way ryan bailey did for example



as has allready been eluded to , 30 + tackles and almost 100 mtrs gained will do me every week





i call that a decent shift

Ok ok maybe stinker was slightly harsh. I couldn't make the game on Friday because I was at my dad's 50th birthday party so had to make do with watching the extended highlights on Sky, which probably makes his errors more glaring and doesn't really show his defensive work. Still not justifying his big fat pay-cheque though

What he *is* justifying is his place in the team.



The pay-cheque is irrelevant - That's down to whatever Maurice was willing to throw in his direction to get him to switch to us from Bradford.



OK, so he had a bad game error-wise (although as was already mentioned, he was "helped" to knock-on a couple of times).



He is working hard for the team (as is everyone else), and I would have him as my first-choice prop every week based on current form.



That says to me that he is worth keeping beyond this year, although the terms will have to be IFL-terms, rather than Mo-terms.

Lets be honest Ganson made an example of him, if the ref is against you there isnt much you can do. At least half the things he got penalised for were wrong and he did well not to lose his cool completley and get binned/sent off. He put his body on the line and threw himself into every tackle and with a better ref he would of been a contender for MOM imo.

He is awesome in defence, top player, he doesn't have th go forward he used to but he consistantly gets a good 8m often attracting players.



He needs to cut the errors though and stop moaning at the ref when the call goes against him. That extra 10m he gave away against leeds could the the difference in another game.



I am quite happy to see all other fans thinking its the same old Fielden, on the VT people are saying all our players bar 3 are very average, does this really matter?

Yes i think he did, I have been very impressed with him this year but the basic errors he made on Friday were very very poor. His carry was shocking and he lost concentration at the most simple of moments resulting in dropped ball and penalties.



I have been hugely impressed with his form this year but the simplistic nature of the repeated errors on Friday for me outweighed the other stats.



If he were to come up with a performance like that in a major semi final or play off I am sure the result of those errors would have been more costly than it was against a Leeds side who are struggling a little for form at the moment, especially in attack.

Stuart Fielden has been in excellent form this season, so far and like many of our squad looks to be a different player to previous seasons.

Leeds seem to target Fielden whenever we play them. They are constantly interfering at the play of the ball, which happened again on friday night, resulting in Fielden being judged to have lost the ball or not played it correctly. Mostly they get away with it because it's something the have almost perfected.

Stuart needs to be aware of this when playing Leeds and try to protect the ball more in the tackle.

I'm sure he'll be ready for Saints come Friday and here's hoping he has a stormer!