And you genuinely think that Singleton and Mullalley will ever be as good as even a 35 year old Cuthbertson? Sorry but your looking at it all wrong, and appears a bit of an agenda there. You change your weakest links first, if we want to be the best we can.

cuthbertson and singleton are totally different types of players. cant compare them. i have been dissapointed with cuthbertson. should have been more of a leader this year and hes hidden at times

Actually I suspect they are likely to be every bit as good as Cuthbertson will be at 35 if not better., because they'll still be in their 20s whilst he will be in RL terms a very old man. I think we as a club started treating Peacock as some kind of benchmark instead of what he was - a one-of-a-kind freak in terms of longevity. In reality very few forwards go on much past their early 30s as the toll of playing wears them down. Gallen will go around next year and he's 37, but his game is in many ways similar to Peacock - all about effort, not about setting up tries or making breaks.

My opinion re Cuthbertson re-signing is that it was a daft decision to give a 33-year old forward 2 more years. Given the evidence of how injury-prone our crones already were, it seems insane to put faith in such a relatively old player being fit enough in two years to seriously contribute. I'd have had no problem with 1 year - and yes, if other clubs wanted to offer longer deals sobeit. That's exactly why some older NRL players come to SL in the first place, because no NRL side will offer them the same contract duration.

That's aside from our clearly differing views of how good/bad Cuthbertson actually is. My view - right or wrong - is based on what I expect from a prop. If you expect different I'm fine with that. I have no 'agenda' against Cuthbertson - I just don't think he's very good. That doesn't mean I think Mullally and Singleton are great either (watching them for Ireland they looked a classic case of if only you could combine the defence of Singleton with the running of Mullally you'd have one hell of a player).

We are not as far away on the views as you think. It is that I believe you are looking at it from the wrong angle. I don't believe Singleton and Mullaley will ever be as good a "prop" as Cuthbertson, but that is seperate to the other issue. For me it is far far far easier to replace a player like Singleton or Mullaley than it is to replace Cuthbertson. Cuthbertson is a far better player for us than the others, and the others will ever be. I fully accept it is a luxury, and the brain farts, but a the same time if you fix what he is playing with, then the benefits are far greater.

Just like when discussing our older forwards, you can make a case for Singleton and Mullally individually as part of a stronger team around them. It seems to me that McDermott/GH have tended to look at far too many players that way (e.g. Sutcliffe would be OK in the centres so long as the rest of the backline is good).

The problem is there doesn't seem to have been any focus on making sure the stronger team around them actually exists by bringing in quality in key positions, so we're left with a majority of players who would go OK if there were just one or two average plodders, leading to an average plodding team rather than a good one. Its like building a pack full of Ian Kirkes on the basis that they're fine so long as we have JP etc, but forgetting to sign JP, Ali, or Kylie.