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.

Unless this means we have given up on the hunt for a Winger???

It's not really replacing 2 old wingers if both Ade and Meli go. Makinson is well versed in RL now, he's not really what I would call a youngster. Although it's worrying if we only have 2 wingers for next year in Ade and Makinson.

Surely we should be scouting the Athletics clubs of the UK for their top runners, they will only be drawing down a few £k in lottery funding. For most they will never hit big money in Athletics. It's not beyond the concept of man to find 2 or 3 15 year olds who are lightening fast and train them for 3 years with rugby ball into how to play wing.

According to Brown in his latest statement though contracts aren't simply his choice. They're the result of discussion with Rush and 'all the coaching staff'.

Meli is better than Gardner. So does he get a new deal too? And if not, why not?

To be fair, I've often looked at wingers as poor relations on the pitch. In the junior teams, if a players got the star quality to be a future SL player, you tend to want them getting hold of the ball more often, rather than on the wing, waiting to be serviced.

I'm tempted to agree.
Whilst he has a reasonable track record, there's always this nagging feeling that our faith in brown is slightly misplaced, fueled for me by continuous inclusion of Wellens in key positions and a couple of other bizarre choices on the pitch. I hope its wrong.

Mmm, its obviously a team of guys that cover the signings - scouts to go out and look at players, Mike Rush to overseas the total spend etc, but surely the head coach should be saying "don't resign him (gardner), I need better"?

That's a worrying comment.

You would think so but that doesn't appear to be how it works. Unless there is an element of back covering of course.

Broughton and Briscoe are both out of contract, we should be going for them. They are both young players who can still improve and in Briscoe's case is a current international who can cover a few positions. Gardner and Meli are both out of contract, with their wage we can improve that positon and improve the squad elsewhere with Makinson and Swift fighting it out for the other spot.

Gardner has been a good, solid pro for us but he's bee in and out for the last 2 and a half years due to injury and form, there is no reason to keep him.

Briscoe yes, Broughton no. I really don't see what fans see in him. Yes he's quick, but so was Kevin Penny. There's a reason why he has been at Leeds then Hull then Salford.

I wonder if Briscoe is one of Marwan Koukash's 6 new signings and they are going to "dump" Broughton (on us)?
Perhaps Gaskell is also one of these exciting new signings for them.

On the subject of Ade; I'd possibly give him one year certainly not two.