Woolf Q&A: Replacing Tommy, Lewis Dodd, interchange debate and Covid

MC: How do you fill the Tommy Makinson and Mark Percival-shaped holes in the coming weeks?

KW: Tommy and Mark are a world class players and deserve all the accolades they get.

They are important for our team. It is not a case of finding someone to replace them to do their jobs, it is about finding players who can come in and be themselves and offer their own strengths.

They are two holes we are going to have to fill, but a couple of young blokes are putting their hands up and can fill them ably.

Jack Welsby started the year on the wing in place of Tommy and did a really good job and has played a bit of centre and full back.

He played every game before the lockdown and learned a lot in that period as well and will be a better player when he gets another opportunity, He will come into contention.

Matty Costello has done the job numerous times for us before and did it against Leeds a couple of weeks ago.

Josh Simm has been outstanding over the Covid break and has come back bigger stronger and fitter and has looked after himself well and so deserves consideration.

MC: With Tommy Makinson and Mark Percival out, are you minded to keep Regan Grace and Kevin Naiqama on their natural sides of the field and not stack one edge with experience?

KW: I tend not to make changes for the sake of it, the fact is we have to replace Tommy and Mark means we are forced to make two changes. We are are going to have other niggles as the year progresses so the less we have to make unnecessary changes the better.

MC: Any updates on Dom Peyroux and Joseph Paulo?

KW: Dom is coming along really well after a disrupted restart, with a slight strain complicated by being ill the week after and then a re-occurrence of the same injury.

This week he has been healthy and showing good signs so he will be coming into contention this week. I have got to figure out what we might do as a side this weekend.

Joseph Paulo is not quite there yet.

MC: Can you explain your thinking behind picking Lewis Dodd in the 21 each week and then as 18th man?

KW: The reason I put him in the 21 if we have a warm-up injury or a late sickness in the halves or at nine or one, and have to change things quickly then Doddy is a bloke that we want around that we 100 per cent trust to be ready to go and jump into that spot.

At some stage in the coming weeks he is going to get an opportunity to make a debut and I am really confident he is going to make a really good debut and show that he is well up to this standard.

That is why we keep naming him and keep him around the squad.

It is about getting the timing right, not just for Lewis but the team as a whole.

The guys we have at 9, 6. 7, 1 are all doing a really good job at the moment and I don't want to break that combination when we don't have to.

But at the same time we have to make sure we get him some time there. I am really excited to see what he can do when he comes in - he has trained really well and has impressed us in the way he goes about his work on and off the field.

He is one of those blokes who will fit in in first grade straight away as soon as he steps up to the mark.

MC: There is talk of upping the interchanges from eight to 10, what are your thoughts on that?

KW: I am very much against it to be honest.

I think we started the year with one set of rules and then changed them during the Covid period and followed in what the NRL was doing.

That long lockdown period gave us an opportunity to look at that and the game decided to make some changes.

If we were to come back and change rules again it would effectively mean that we are playing under a third set of rules in one season.

That would not be a good look for our competition at all.

It would be a knee-jerk reaction to go and change them again. For the integrity of the competition we need to stick to what we have got now.

The six again rule was brought in to keep the ball in play more so you are not kicking for touch and no scrums.

Players are getting more touches and having to make more tackles – that is the biggest difference.

That was designed to speed the game up and take away the stoppages and therefore increase fatigue.

That is exactly what it has done – if we went and changed the interchanges up to 10 then we would be going back on the reasons why we brought that rule in for in in the first place and can’t understand why we would want to do that.

I do understand that we will have short turnaround games later on in the year and player welfare is a big consideration for us there.

But changing the rules does not impact on player welfare, it is up to us as coaches to look after our players and rotate our squads and be smart on how we handle that period rather than looking at the rules.

MC: You have highlighted the procedures that the club have gone through since the false positive Covid result with the staff member. It shows how fragile the world is?

KW: Covid is going to be a cloud that will hang over our heads for the rest of the season.

We have had a warning shot this week that has made us re-visit things and make us better if a real Covid case comes into play and we will be a lot better equipped as a result of this.

Every other club is going to be in the same boat where they will get a warning shot or get something.

We had a taste of that earlier when we had to pull Matty Lees out with a sore throat and then Dom Peyroux was sick a week later. That is going to continue throughout the season and we have to have the mentality of just being able to crack on but at the same time limiting the impact of infection.

We have not had any positive Covid cases here at all yet, but we have had a couple of blokes report ill with symptoms and until they got a negative test then we could not consider playing them.

We are under strict guidance – observing restrictions around using private gyms, pools and any potential close contact with members of the public that are outside of our bubble, or family members.

MC: How will that change when the players and coaches send their kids back to school?

KW: That will present another little challenge – but we have to trust the government advice that the kids don’t tend to carry the virus as much as adults even if they have the potential to.

We also have to trust that the schools are creating a safe environment.

That won’t be bullet-proof but we have to have some trust there.

It will present some challenges when we get sick kids and what we are going to have to do is make sure we have a testing programme where we can figure out really quickly whether Covid is a possibility and if it is then that is going to stop people, whether staff or players, from playing or being a part of training for that period.