Watkins and Ward the difference between us getting smashed by wire or keeping it close. Missing them both in defence and attack!

Spot on, the squad has become weaker season by season. To be honest we are a shambles at the moment. A mixture of players who are not good enough, players who are retiring or should be. Plus players who are leaving the club, not forgetting players who seem to be forever injured. Looking on the bright side we will have 2 magnificent stands.

One of the common threads with the disintegration of so-called 'Champion' teams here in Oz (both AFL and NRL) is keeping players on too long and overvaluing bit-part players who could have been replaced by players of similar ability without making any difference to the team. In the end you have a team with a hugely unbalanced salary cap due to back-ending deals or players on long-term deals who are no longer up to the standards their wages demand. All of a sudden you're wondering how on earth the team can be so bad and yet be paying the same in total as other teams who leapfrog past.

To be fair part of the problem is the salary cap itself. But part of it is just taking your eye off the ball. We as a club gave up on serious youth development, and yet if that was all we'd kept investing in we wouldn't be in the state we are now as we'd doubtless have some far better players in their early 20s than we do now.

What would be realistic regarding academy products?

One player every year who is first team quality? One every two years?

I'd say we should be able to produce 1 or 2 squad quality players every year, perhaps one of them is starting first team quality after 3 years in the environment. If we are producing more than 1 top quality player every 3 or 4 years then we are doing really well.

Of course part of the benefit you get in bringing in a lot of younger players at the same time is they've played together so long there is an understanding between them. This is what we got when we introduced the golden generation. You need the players and the timing for that to work, and that's very difficult to achieve.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious. I would assume the club has assessed the situations/ incidents in which Stevie is being injured. Eg is he first man in the tackle, is Stevie’s position going into the tackle wrong. Quite obviously he can’t carry on being repeatedly concussed.