Just to be clear, and I know how the minds work on here, I'm not OFFERING a Thai massage. Although I do have silky hands.

Devastating? Come on. Martin is a very good player as I've said, but he has very little impact at the line and isn't physically intimidating down the middle. If we don't change the type of player we have, we are not going to be able to do anything different on the pitch are we?

Arthur is worth extra for his pulling power with players I think.

Generally people on here have almost zero commercial awareness. The club does not have bottomless pockets and neither can we breach the cap. Every player has a price, and so does Martin - if the club offered him what they thought was a fair amount and someone else wanted him more, at 32 next year how is it sensible to get in a bidding war for him?

He is good, but he isn't THAT good. He's also not the right body type for what everyone has been screaming out for. Would it have been nice to keep him? Yes. But not at any price.

Also looking at youth, with players like Gannon, Cassell and Lloyd coming through, maybe still Ruan and Butterfield, we are actually quite well stacked into the future. I'd go with the best NRL back rower we can afford on 2 years were it me, get some whack at the line and take some pressure off our front rowers. We need to use a marquee if it's available for either the back rower or the prop (but not make a total disaster of it like we did with Tetevano).

I dont think the quota change is coming in until 2026 so the positive here is we do have another quota space open up

Good kicker is Rhyse, he’s not got a 97% kick rate though.

This deal is not done yet Rovers are stalling if Martin is on the quota next year they have to release someone .
Apparently we offered him a 3 year improved deal.
Maybe we should improve it to Rovers offer.
We struggled for a long time when skinny retired.

People talk about us not being a 'big' club. One thing a 'big' club should never do is pay overs for any player. That's what desperate teams do. From all accounts we made Martin an offer, which he refused. We offered more and he refused again. The club then simply announced that he'll be leaving as a result of not taking up the revised offer.

That is the sort of discipline we'll need to revamp the squad. Work out what players are worth, and offer no more. It doesn't take many players being paid even small overs and you'll start having to make cuts elsewhere.

We probably had to do that to rebuild post Agar. Some of our players must be on contracts paying higher than their open market value as a result. The fact we're at or near the cap with a squad barely capable of scraping into the 6 tells you everything you need to know. Compare our 1-17 to Wigan, Sts or even KR and its clear we've got ourselves into a mess again.

I'd like to keep Martin, mainly for his goalkicking. But if we want to upsize our pack we need cap space, and most likely quota spots. We're ridiculously overloaded in the backs on quota, for frankly not a great return. Hopefully as some of the younger backs force their way into the team we'll be able to rebalance. But there's no question we've got into a mess, because our squad just isn't good enough yet.

Isn't that why they've released Matt Parcell?

For me, it's a shame if he goes, but certainly not devastating.
He's been a solid, not spectacular back row.
He'll be 32, so we should not be throwing money at him.
If he's settled in Leeds, he can only be going for big bucks (no matter what Rovers fans say).
The goalkicking will be the biggest miss undoubtedly. That will need replacing.
But the biggest issue will be if the quota change comes in next year and he wouldn't have been a quota spot.
That would be a big shame.
If not, it's not such a massive blow.
Good luck to him.
Once a rhino, alwatys a rhino...

They're still over the Quota even with him going IIRC

Cheers.

Agree with all this good post.

Do you not realise he has been our best player all season

not particularly a high bar though is it.....

How many MoMs has he had? One or two?

I wouldn't say best, I'd say most consistent. How much would you pay him to keep him, relative to other players in the squad?

I agree but if we are going to get better we need to keep our best players and replace the dross with even better players and of course improve the coaching at senior and junior levels which is shocking and has been for years