Jon you are linking fluidity and metres made by backs who very often have a “given” 10 or 15 yards?
We are not missing King who for me as a centre in its classical parlance was pretty average to ok. I wouldn’t put King in the same sentence as Wardle let alone even compare the two.
I assume we’ve signed Keighran in the understanding that he isn’t going to make the “hard backs yards” because we have a squad containing Havard, Ellis, Thompson etc who will also contribute to the “hard backs yards” compared to recent years.
What we are missing for me is more intensity. At he moment the only forward contributing real intensity from minute one is O’Neil and to a lesser degree Thompson and Hill. The rest of the pack post Penrith have been pretty average to ok.
I’m not really a stats fan other than did we win or lose.
I’m pretty confident that when we play HKR next time we will start and the finish the game completely differently to last week. The pack defensively and tempo wise will give us ample opportunity to get us to Wembley. A back making 100 yards will be a contributing factor but our pack dominating theirs will be the deciding factor.

That is a very good point that I have overlooked!

Marshy is currently in 19th place with around 100 m less than Johnston who is currently in 10th.

King to Keighran was always going to a drop off in meters made but Miski and Marshall are still here and good at taking the hard carries in to give our pack a rest. I do think with our improvement in the pack losing King and this aspect of his game shouldn’t be a major issue and once our attack starts to click (hopefully soon) I think you will see the benefit of having Keighran in the side.

Keighran is clearly a classy centre and I don’t think Fields slightly lethargic start to the year by his standards has helped him as he needs a bit of space to produce his best. King was more direct blunt force.

It’s early in the season and as you say when things click I’m confident we will see more from him.

His effort has been good no issue with that it’s just how he fits in to the team so we get the best out of him that is taking a bit of time.

Like others have said, I'm not worried one bit about Marshall. He's two games behind everyone else, but one try off being the joint top try scorer. He's doing ok.

It's very early days yet, we've played what 30% of the season + the WCC and a few CC games. That being said I don't think, looking at games played so far, that any of the new signings have been better than the lads they've replaced. I'd happily take Smithies, Powell and King back over Thompson, Leeming and Keirghan.

I'm looking forward to seeing a side with Walters in it alongside all of Thompson, Havard, Nsemba, Dupree, Farrell etc. That pack will make loads of ground and the backs and in particular the centres, should get plenty of room to do their thing and the burden to make ground from our end shouldn't be quite as high as it's been at times in years gone by. It's an easy excuse to make but I still think the pitches are impacting guys like Field, Keighran and French. They're still pretty heavy and they'll only be more dangerous as they firm up.