GH OUT

Hopefully a full injury free off season gets Oledski back to his best.

We also need an improvement in Sangare and Lisones fitness to ensure we start the season well.

Personally think when fully fit our back line is alongside Wigan's as the best in the league. I also think we now have the best hooker in the league, albeit some may prefer Clark.

It is the front row and back row where we really need to stand up. Holroyd and Oledzki have the potential to be very good and I like Lisone. Likewise, McDonnell, Gannon and Smith have the potential to be very good. A highly experienced prop would really help out our forwards.

Hetherington is cooking. He’s purring. He’s back!

I think he finally realised fans weren't going to put up with anymore Wellington Albert tier transfers.

I'd say that's exactly what has happened. To be fair to him we probably wanted to do more last off season but were constrained by the cap and contracts. The turnover between when Smith arrived and now is probably only rivalled by the 1997 reset after Caddick took over. The big difference is that Leeds were almost bankrupt in 96 and lost most of the good players we had under Douggie. This time we let the poor quality build over a period of years. Still, glad to see we've drawn that line in the sand fans have been asking for.

If the end game is have a successful side that sells season tickets and grabs the corporate cash - difficult to see how GH could have done much better.

I have been a critic of the direction of the club - this is the best off season in terms of recruitment for many years and you have to praise GH for putting the clubs money into the squad.

Indeed, the real keys now are to get the academy producing, so in the next 2/3 years we can start to replace "bought in" players with home grown academy players ready to rock and roll.

The other is to drastically improve player fitness / preparation as we've been riddled with injury gluts for the last few years with large chunks of salary cap twiddling thumbs in the stand.

I have been a vehement critic of the cheap "project" signings but fair play to Gawwy, this has been a stellar intake.

Every club makes "cheap project signings", its a salary capped sport, you cant just go and buy a team of international players when you have salary cap been payed to other players.

I'm certainly excited at the prospect of hospitality for next season.

Agree - last year's recruitment was a strategy driven by cap constraints, rather than going cheap. We had very little cap space and Smith focused on bringing in depth and some younger players who were closer to first team than Academy kids. One of his early comments was that there were virtually no hungry reserves in their early 20s who he could pick when injuries bit. Instead in some positions it was either move players around or pick 17 year olds.

The strategy was always going to be hit and miss, and maybe in a couple of years most of them will have gone. But we unearthed McDonnell who looks a gem, and a couple of others look like being OK squad players. Even Hooley after his disastrous start looked like he'd be a very good reserve if he'd stayed. The only absolute dud was Olpherts, who looks like being reserve at best if he stays.

He's pulled it out of the bag hasn't he, for the first time in quite a few years. I'd say the original question, at the time of asking, was fair. Gary has answered it very well and demonstrated his worth and nerve is still there.

wonder how much, if any, input JJB had?

None

We thought he was cooked.

On the contrary, he’s cooking.