Saw this on RedVee, mentioned in the RL papers this week.

I hope not. But, it would sum up everything that is wrong with our club at the moment.

No chance. It's highly questionable if he's even first choice any more. He's had long spells out of the side where he's not been injured this season.

Well, he's been interviewed in League Express and appears convinced he's getting a new deal, which he hopes is two years.

Very poor.

My thoughts exactly.

Ade has, during periods of his career, been very good at attacking high balls.

Perhaps with the recruitment of Walsh, this is going to be a [igo to[/i play for us?

I can only think of two times he's done that. Brisbane in the World Club Championships and Leeds last season. It's a totally stupid move to resign a player based on that, especially given Ade hasn't got the pace to be in position for those enough to make it a threat.

2006 Grandfinal?

See my overall thoughts on it above, but it may be a little bit of a silver lining if he does resign. Plus, we haven't had anyone that has been delivering that sort of kick in recent years, have we?

Gardner consistently makes a hash of competing for high balls and if only three instances of him actually taking one can be recalled in a career spanning ten years then that suggests he is very poor. In fact, the only thing going for Ade is his kick returns. He doesn't have pace, he isn't exactly a great finisher (at least not these days), his defence is iffy and his ability under the bomb debatable.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if all our OOC contract players were re-signed but I wouldn't agree with any of them being re-signed myself, bar Laffranchi on the basis of him playing in the second row and even then I'd be 50/50 on it.

Awfull decision by the club if true? These signing's are the reason were sitting 8th place and looking at a 6th loss on the trot?
Send him on his way with a big thank you

It would surprise me, given the injuries he's had, given the recent experience of keeping players too long. Given that we would not offer Longy a 2 year deal. Only a few years back.

He was very good at it around the 2006-07 period, but he's had period where he's been equally as dreadful.
I can only think that the club are panicking about replacing two old wingers at once, even though we have have Swift and Makinson who are in many ways as capable as Ade.

Does the club not have any young wingers? It seems like we always use young standoffs/centres as back up in order to break them in. Makinson stuck there, but he was a centre originally. What young wingers do we have?

I've been prepared to be patient with Brown, as he has had a lot of rubbish to deal with since taking over. I can accept a bit of short-term suffering if there is a clear plan to get things changed, both in terms of our style of play and the scale of our ambitions.

If we give a two year contract to Gardner that will suggest to me that no such plans are in place, and I will really begin to worry about the future of the club.

It cannot be true. It simply cannot be true. The likes of Briscoe is available and we're gonna offer a 45 year old winger a new 2 year deal?

Stick a fork in us. We're done.

Who knows? We never get to see them. Either we don't produce specialist wingers or our young wingers are actually players playing on the wing but are better elsewhere on the pitch. In the short years I've been watching Saints (since 2007 on a regular basis), I have simply never seen us play an indentified young winger on the wing. They've always been something else. It's like we see the wing spot more as a means of blooding a young backline player rather than as a spot in itself.

But whichever way we play it, keeping Meli and Gardner on the wings for another two years is not the way forward. The rest of our backline will be faster than the wingers and that is just ludicrous.