Ned McCormack didn’t look out of place last year in the centre. I agree with other people who think that Handley would play there which makes sense given we have more depth on the wing. I assume Max Simpson might be somewhere near at some point too.

The back row does look light on depth and arguably quality, and I still think we’re a prop short.

I'd forgotten McCormack. He did look promising.

Much better to have a pathway for promising youngsters than having squadfillers that are never going to achieve the required standard like we have done the last few years. If the pack goes well its easier to blood young players in the backs. Agree if the money is there we need another big forward but happy to see the likes of Lumb McCormack Edgill and Simpson get game time in the backs!

Again to be fair to Smith we just didn't have many good young players around when he joined, which is why he started signing 'squad' players. We signed too many no doubt, and retained a bunch of players we shouldn't have, but our first 17 was/is a bigger problem. Not that he did a great job there, in the forwards at least....

That’s fair. Smith arguably had the same group of youngsters they just weren’t ready yet, so can understand some of the filler he signed. Those players are now 2 years further on.

I’d love to be able to send sinfield on a years loan but still unsure if there’s the depth for that.

They're a really professional outfit but it helps to have such a high level of participation in their patch. Thousands of juniors playing RL in the Penrith catchment alone - every week! A British RL club would never get that in their wildest dreams.

Most NRL clubs don't get that either.

True and they say as much in the interview. Participation is so important. Shows why Australia have been so dominant internationally since the 1970s when participation went through the roof. It's in contrast to over here. I bet there are more juniors playing RL in Penrith than there are in the whole of Yorkshire.

Get the right systems and pathway and with a hinterland like Penrith it's difficult not to see them in the top 2 or 3 for the foreseeable future.

You're probably right. Covid really hit the amateur game hard. Thankfully, it looks like participation numbers are starting to recover, but are still below pre-covid levels, but are still below 2017 levels.

Just reading "The Invincibles" by Mark Flanagan. It's the story of the 82 Kangaroo tour, but it starts out with the rebuild the Australian game underwent after GB had won the ashes in 1970. Interesting stuff. For anybody who is not as long in the tooth as me, I would recommend watching what you can of those tests on youtube. The game has changed of course, but that team were truly remarkable. Wayne Pearce still looks like a 2nd row from the future more than 40 years on.

Thanks for the recommend Arthur. A while ago I read "Reilly" the biography of Malcolm Reilly by Ian Heads. That has a bit where he remembers seeing an explosion in participation in Sydney in the early 70s with kids playing RL all over the place. That, along with the climate and the lack of competing winter sports meant that the game down under was always going to surpass that over here. Their interest in new coaching ideas helped too. I read in the biographies of Roy Francis and Jack Gibson how they used to swap notes. While Francis didn't stay long at Norths his approach to the game appealed to Gibson who then went to the USA and came back and revolutionised things. They've been ahead of us ever since. That bit in the podcast about who Penrith learn from and who learns from them was interesting.

So I had a major update from my source tonight as I asked over the weekend was there any update with recruitment after the Sivo deal was announced I asked about are we looking to bring in another forward.

Ian Blease has reportedly enquired about singing John Bateman for the 2025 season.

Now I was told that Blease contacted West Tigers about a season long loan for 2025 with West's contributing towards his wages and if Bateman was to be a success in 2025 we would look at taking him on permanently in 2026. He's wanting to try meet with Bateman now he's in the country playing for England so that could happen in next couple of weeks.


It's been quite public that West Tigers are looking to offload Bateman after apparently falling out with their head coach Benji Marshall. So I could see West being interested if their isn't a mass amount of clubs chasing Bateman.

I was also told the club is very happy with the recruitment ahead of next season and are only looking at 1 more signing if the right deal came about so if this Bateman deal happened we wouldn't be bringing in another forward/ signing such as Liam Byrne etc.


If the Bateman deal happens I can however see this that he'd get the 11 shirt, Mcdonnell would get 12 and then Bentley would move to 16 and act as middle/ back row interchange like he was playing under Arthur at the end of last season. Having a rotation of Bateman/ Mcdonnell/ Bentley & Gannon creates healthy competition between them all.
My only slight concern would be that the 4 players I've named above are all in the same mold smaller back rowers with a high work rate it does lack a bit of punch for me but we did ok with JJB & Ablett as our back rowers for nearly a decade and they we're workman like backrowers.

Overall if this happened I don't think it's bad business and smart business as well from Blease as it would only be a loan and we wouldn't be stuck with Bateman if he had a poor season and didn't perform like we would if we bought him from Wests.

Interesting bit of feedback mate thank you.
Having heard some of the pundits destroying Batemans performance and stating there is no way he will play for Wests again. It did feel he is playing a bit of a game, contracted for 2 more years and if you want to pay me for sitting at home then so be it.
My concern is he is too similar to what we have and whilst we managed with the likes of Ablett and JJB we also had a better set of halfbacks and prop forwards than we have now.

Interesting. Wouldn’t add any size to the pack, but as you say it would add a lot of flexibility. Bateman does seem to gave burned his bridges in Oz.

I mean we all know everyone hates Leeds but can you imagine the sheer amount of housery we would have with Bateman Connor Newman and Bentley in the same team