When we signed Long last season like most people on this thread i thought "Great" but who are we going to sign as his understudy.

As our dismal season continued last year and no name came forth i began to worry. Surely we would sign someone - anyone to provide cover for those inevitable times that we would be without Long due to injury. Sadly it was not to be and now we are at that point of the season when our half back is AWOL due to injuries. So the rest of the season continues pretty much as last season with the only exception being that Agar has a two year extension - go figure.

Reminds me a bit of '08 when we had Dykes.

Yes you are right.

Cant think of many teams in Super League who can afford to have an "understudy" as such. Most teams just shuffle the players around to cover.

Who will play for Sts when Eastmond is out, who would play for Bradford if Orford is out. Warrington and Hudds seem to be the only teams with ample cover in the halfs, but then they are still players who are in the first team most weeks having to shift position to cover others.

The salary cap seriously hampers your attempts to cover every specialist position, unless your Wire

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Never did them any good today

I haven't looked at their full squad list, but Wigan seem to be fairly well covered, too.

Like I said earlier, they are covered but only by moving players already in the starting 17 around.

Who are our u21 halves and how are they progressing?

the u20's half back is Lee Williams and stand off is Danny Nicklas.



They look pretty handy on the hullfc tv highlights.

Our fifth different half back pairing of the season in 11 games.



Horne-Long

Washbrook-Horne

Turner-Horne

Turner-Long

Turner-Washbrook

Bit of a worrying trend, I thought that would be one aspect that may improve this season.

what i dont understand is why we dont try our halfbacks out the academy??? salford did it hence myler, wigan did it hence tomkins, st helens do it hence eastmond. we could have the next big thing in league but i dont think they get a good enough chance if they play scrum half, at current we have 3 players pushing to make it in the first team, dennis tuffour, reece lyne and jack briscoe, these all play wing or fullback which in my opinion is a easier position to replace a player. so why are we pushing wingers through the academy instead of halfbacks where we have been short for cover for years???????