could he end up with minus yardage

He really does. Not sure I've ever seen a good player just drop off a cliff like he has done over the last 12 months. He must know it, just a case as to whether he acts on it. Merrin packed it in for St George at the start of the year and said that he realised the game had passed him by. Maybe not totally out of the question that Prior would do the same.

I wonder whether we will announce the signing of Olpherts before the game on Saturday

Nah, don’t announce bad news after a defeat and before a big game…

Well the Catalans game showed again that there's a limit to how far you can go when you get hammered up the middle of the park. If you want to be able to hold your ground against a big pack you need size and aggression. A makeweight like Mulhern would make little difference.

Unless Prior gets back to last years form I would like him to go , but I wouldn’t walk away from my last big pay cheque.
Calling Mulhern a makeweight is harsh and would gladly have him return.
I think Walters will turn out to be a big prop in a couple of years , he is only 21 and most props aren’t ready till 25 ish .

Why would you have Mulhern? What difference would he make against Cats or St Helens? If we can't sign a ready-made prop who can make a difference then we need to work on getting Holroyd, Walters and maybe Ruan to step up. Mulhern is at the peak of his career and simply isn't the answer to our problems.

I'm not sure I'm following the recruitment process this year. We seem to be/have offloaded players obviously that Ronan Smith doesn't see a future with and recruited Hardaker for this term. It must have been necessary to reduce the wage bill before end of year. This must mean we were absolutely on the limit. I wonder what percentage of the cap the overseas players take up, because apart from Martin, I don't think we've had any value at all and its like a continuing weight around our necks which we are forced to try to improve the squad signing championship players,

No I think the we were clearing space for a signing to come in this year but they couldn't get anything sorted in the end.

I actually think fans generally force clubs into big money, marquee type signings. Rarely work out……

All of our current overseas players were signed before Smith arrived. Furner pushed the club to sign some big name players when he joined, which caused us real problems because they were mostly disappointing (or unfit, or both) but chewed up a lot of cap, especially then having to take emergency measures to fix things (like Lui for Lolohea).

Sadly neither GH, Sinfield or Agar seem to have had much of a clue since then, although the problem wasn't just the signings themselves but the length of deals - Thompson was probably relatively cheap, but why so long? Why was Prior given two years at his age? Why sign a winger when we have issues in more influential positions?

Hopefully Smith has a far better idea of who to go for. He has relationships with a lot of players and clearly watches a lot of games. I don't know what other Leeds coach in recent times would have even thought of McDonnell or Sangare? While unproven at least he's not locking in huge swathes of cap for long periods with them.

I'm not sure who else we'll see join, but I have more faith already in Smith's ability to spot a player, mainly because I can't see an error with any of the players leaving.