I think this is the strategy for next season, balance in depth. Jack Owens should be an improvement on Dawson in the single fact he can cover fullback/wing positions. These days its very difficult to keep your first 17 players for an extensive period of games, we can more or less assure that we are going to have an injury crisis next season when this occurs our recruitment might not mean a lot of disruption of players playing out of position.
My biggest worry is what KC is going to do with Turner and Burns will they be considered for a settled position and what will that be.

I agree. That may well come in 2017, when we have some big earners coming off contract, but I don't expect anything of that nature for 2016.

Didn't we say the same thing last season knowing Wello, Hohaia, Flanagan, Masoe & Jones were off contract? Mose & Lance were reportedly huge earners. There's always gonna be players off contract wanting improved deals, Savelio will only have a year left next year again for example. A centre & prop were vital for this season IMO, no idea how hard we tried to push the likes of Burns, Dawson, Turner etc towards new clubs but IMO we needed a centre more than another wing/FB. Both Tommy Mak & Swift are capable of covering SMD & Lomax at full back but we need a quality centre partner for Percy badly, an injection of pace/strike could have taken us a long way.

Nice to see the panic has set in.

How far were we off top spot this year?

I'd expect nothing more from the sad one, but others tend to have more sense.


But I'd be happy to lay a fiver on us being in the top 6 if anyone is seriously considering us being outside that group.

Why top 6? We scraped into the top 4 this season and the clubs below us have definitely made moves to improve their squads. Why is it such an unthinkable notion that we might struggle?

We finished 10 points above 6th place Wire last year.

We didn't scrape into the top 4 though, we dropped down into 4th place after 2 losses targeting top spot. For accuracy I would say we struggled at the latter end to try and get 1st place and ended up the 3rd best team for super league wins.

Losing Wilkin to injury really scuppered us. We were challenging for top spot before that happened, despite playing some god awful rugby.

Given that we have lost Josh Jones to Union and JT is being moved into the pack maybe KC is looking to give Matty Dawson an extended run at centre, his preferred position.

Matty has had to cover on the wing a number of times with mixed results, signing Owens means we have a winger to cover/interchange with Swift and Tommy freeing Dawson of his utility back role. I doubt that Dominique Peyroux has been signed as a first choice centre, he is likely to play in the back row, so the only other man in the squad that fits the bill is Matty.

If we're going into the 2016 season with Matt Dawson as our first choice centre then we're in a much worse position than I thought.

This makes no sense whatsoever, with all due respect.

Why would we move Turner from centre to back row, as well as playing Peyroux in the backrow, to go alongside Wilkin, Greenwood, Vea and LMS and then leave ourselves with one proper centre in Percival and a dud in Dawson? There's no balance there; 6 backrowers and 2 (at a push) centres.

There is no chance he will play Dawson at centre and then leave one of the above mentioned players out of the 17. That would be bordering on madness.

It seems to me that Matty Dawson has been retained purely as an insurance.The coaches know what he is capable of and can cover across the three quarters and he is durable therefore not often injured.If we get to the stage we are struggling with injuries and down to playing u19's that may not be ready Matty is there to cover.At the end of the day we only have a certain level of cap to play with and the club spends it how they feel best.

Its much easier to put Turner back at centre and coached to improve his defence and make Wilkin into a settled loose forward pivotal role. We've now got Fages to cover half back/hooker positions Turner is an attacking threat out wide something we missed in the last 6 games.

I can see your point, but if Turner's defensive frailties haven't been coached out of him by now I can't see that changing anytime soon. He's just not a great decision maker when it comes to defending on the edges. It's a tricky one, as I'm not convinced Dominique Peyroux is any great shakes in that department either.

I think the problem is if KC wants to play Turner at loose forward were do we play Wilkin, he lost (Wilkin) 5 kilo to allow him to play half back and is not big enough for second row these days and makes our pack too light.