When it seems to happen year after year I'd say it shows the club has problems with their training, be it the facilities or the methods. Mr McDermott made that point on Boots N All last night with regards to Hull, who do seem to go through this process every year.

It used to be Leeds with the hamstrings IIRC

If Leeds do go on to win the title again, it will be partially down to luck, that we didn't get a whole load of injuries at the same time, and partly down to faith in the depth that we have from our juniors. Of course we know that the first 17 is as strong as any in the league.

You could argue that we was, and as I said earlier, recruitment is different now, to what it was in 2002 when we signed him.

I personally think he was an established SL player when we signed him, which rules him out of that category.

I wasn't thinking about his signing for Leeds specifically. At the equivalent age he'd trod a similar path to that of Sam Moa although Moa has now arrived in SL at a younger age than Poching did.

Willie Poching was an outstanding player for both Wakefield and Leeds IMO and if that's an example of a 'Kolpak Stiff' then they can't be all bad.

One of the founder playing squad of the Hunter Mariners before his arrival in England IIRC - not sure how many SL appearances he made Down Under though...

Poching was a great servant to leeds and Wakey, but there should be plenty of players being produced by clubs of a similar standard. The reason is that clubs would rather sign a ready made product like Poching, or Moa, or Korkidas, or plenty of the other foreign players out there, as its easier than developing their own.

But Moa isn't ready made.

When we played Hull at Heaingley Sky attributed a quote to Agar that Moa was "a project".

In all this debate I'm still unsure as to which players those who believe we are understrength consider that we should have signed.
It's pointless simply spending money for the sake of it just because we can.
I'm sure that the management team have done their best to seek additional players but have decided that those available or on offer would not add to the existing squad.

You could argue that Gleeson was available and would have improved our backline. It may be that we didn't want to touch him with a bargepole, information that most fans aren't privvy to.

We could have signed Solia for next season, it wouldn't have done much good this year though.

Can't think of many other signings that othe SL clubs have made that I regretted us not getting, doesn't mean that others weren't available though

Would we have had to get rid of players to fit Gleeson in under the cap given that Eastwood may be here next year (I think this deal was done before Smith confirmed he was leaving for Wasps)

I can imagine the outcry from some quarters if Leeds had bust the bank to sign Martin Gleeson - "why are we signing a player at the end of his career who is going to get in the way of Watkins/Gibson/Ratu/Broughton?"

Your second two sentences are what is more relevant.

Gleeson is irrelevant. He wasn't what we needed.

The club themseleves have identified that the forwards were needed, hence the signing of Eastwood. Eastwood did not materialize so we were light, meaning that players of the calibre of Kirke are now established starters. The club have realized this problem and signed 2 more forwards, one of which they have signed immediately.

The issue is, could they have done something about it earlier? Players do not have to be made publically available to be available. And has 2010 recruitment been damaged because of the Eastwood affair?

So do you know that nothings happening/happened behind the scenes then???????
You know we went after pritchard,soliola and recently millard i'd say that they have tried to do the deals but 1 reason or another they haven't come off.
As for the 2010 recruitment only time will tell how/if that's been disrupted.

Quite so. Pitts wasn't available publically but it didn't stop Leeds making an approach to Wakefield and for the signing to follow shortly after.