Fella whilst he may have done slightly better the question that need to be asked is how have the opposition got into that position in the first place, far too often in the past we've had to rely on a full back to make a try saving tackle (and Patten has done a few himself) what we don't see is that he'll be organising the defence for the next tackle thinking that his team in front of him will wrap up this guy who's on a solo run, instead he'll need to change direction and try to catch the likes of Briscoe and that's no mean feat. We don't spot the full back until it's much further on when it becomes one on one or worse. How did Briscoe get through, how did Tickle get through etc there the questions MP has to find answers for.



He's far from perfect but aren't most of our players?

Firstly is Patten a massive improvement on Fitzy ? YES 1000% !



I starting following the Reds the season after the playoff year and TBH how he stayed the Number one fullback through right till the end of last season I'll never know . Nothing in attack and laughable when bringing the ball back !



Patten is a presence and It's great to see him lining up EVERY SINGLE WEEK ! . He has had shaky moments and from what I have seen always demands the highest standards from himself ! Defensively if he is the last line then the damage to the line has already been done and the likelihood is he will be outnumbered anyway !



Offensively he is fast , strong , wise and obv links up with DJ really well (If a little obvious at times !)



I for one do not Doubt him and I think we will be hard pushed to find a better replacement when his contract is up !

I agree mate MP needs to seriously look at how the line is getting broke in the first place because its getting broke far to easy i agree with that and yes that way you don't have to rely on patten but in any game of rugby the line is going to get broke at some point, now when that does happen weather its another players fault or not are we now saying its ok for them to score because we all know patten cant defend? A full back for me still needs to be able to defend in the modern game. This is just my opinion though i don't expect everyone to agree just the way i see it.

patten is a classy player but salfford just need to improve the team and the new coach can put some good structures in place to allow the likes of patten to show more

I want my fullback to join the line and link in with the attack, his defence isn't the best but I've seen worse and he doesn't like to catch anything on the full but he has the ability to get himself out of trouble most of the time.



I would like him to link up with Matty smith a bit better like he does with DJHoldsworth but I feel this may come in time.



Defensively our structure isn't the best but I feel patten plugs the gap who h appear, the area of the field we need to address is our right channel (rachford,smith) and our left channel (Anderson and Gibson/gleeson ) teams tend to send heavy traffic over to the right channel smith n rachford usually trying to tackle far bigger n stronger units than themselves, lots of grabbing going on rather than tackling so its something to look into.



Anderson great in attack always promotes the ball but needs to bend his back a little more in defence, Gibson shoots out of the line in defence too much creating overlaps.



Parish can address our edge defence and our line speed so we are going forward in defence rather than losing the contact and 5 yards every tackle who knows what we can do.

Really interested to see the responses to my thread. It seems that most people view full back as more of an attacking position than a defensive one. If that's the case, indeed Patten can be seen as a success. However, it may be old fashioned, but for me I prefer a full back who can put his body on the line and is effective under a high ball.



If that turns out to be MP's view, our priority is to assemble a pack that can dominate the opposition and have half backs and Centres who do not resemble turnstiles. If not, surely an attacking full back is a luxury we can't afford.

Must admit I'm never confident when he's fielding a kick of any sort, theres always that doubt that he may drop it or do something stupid and as for when the line is broken well we can forget him making a tackle a try is defiantly on the cards.



Saying that he is a class act going forward not doubting that for one minute, but we need to remember that if you play at Salford you need to be able to defend as well as attack because more often than not the line will be broke or we will be required to mop things up on our own line.

I think Tex Evans caught more bombs than Patten! The hype surrounding Luke before his arrival hasn't lived up to expectations IMO and I guess thats where my critic of him started. In the first friendly he played against Wigan I stated he looked very suspect in defence and was shouted down, I stick by that opinion and believe to have been proved right.



It's been stated on this thread in a way that most people prefer an attacking FB rather than a defensive one or to put it another way - a modern FB rather than the traditional. Paul Wellens stands head and shoulders above the rest in adopting both the old and the new for mine.



Luke is a good player - not great but half decent, he has cost Salford more points than I can remember from simple mistakes where previous FB's did not and for mine that stands out alarmingly! However I much prefer the way Salford are playing with the style of attack he offers than the way they have in the past. If the defensive line is so weak and Patten can't tackle very well there is always the option of playing two FB's when defending, it's been done before!

If Patten is weak at tackling why not move him to the wing when were defending and then move him back to fullback when we are attacking. He could switch places with Mark Henry.

TBH I'm unsure whether I worry more about his tackling or his failure to be able to catch a bomb and the more I think about it the more I like the idea of two FB's, would give the oppostion a lot more to think about and could change the modern game into something more interesting than the 50+ hammerings we witness in games week in week out plus O/T I'd also like to see the 3 points for a win and bonus point introduced into SL.

I think that FB's ability under the high ball is pretty old hat these days as most bombs are contested by centres and wingers, with FB's taking only a tiny percentage compared to the past. Look at Steve Hampson. I don't think he ever dropped a high ball. I certainly never seen him drop one that I can remember. On the other hand, his tackling was awful and his attacking play pretty good.



Ok, the General's tackling hasn't been great but I stand by my previous post as it being secondary to an extra attacker.

I'm really in favour of those 2 ideas.

As for using 2 FB's, that could be workable, but it'd probably see off the 40/20 to some degree. Therefore, I'm not sure if that would be a good thing.