He can go.

We have players in abundance at second row or people who can cover that position. Ashurst and Dixon can play more next year.

He is expendable and will free up cap room.

This is true and something that concerns me these days with regards to many of our fans' attitudes towards signing other superleague players. It seems like to many fans if they play in the superleague but not at Saints they aren't good enough to pull on a redvee.

I seem to remember similar dismissiveness towards Pryce's signing (although this may have had as much to do with something else).

I for one thought paul anderson was too old
I've learnt my lesson

Fair comment but just to play devils advocate ... its all well and good us freeing loads of cap space but who/what are we freeing it for?

1. We're covered in most positions other than prop.
2. Most of the kids have already negotiated new contracts this year so their salaries should be set for next season.
3. We are already losing, at least one if not two or three of our highest wage earners in Long, Cayless and KC.
4. We are allegedly spending under the cap this year.

I'm not sure i agree that our squad is weak as such, unless you just mean inexperienced. Unfortunately this is something we have to take a chance with, alongside most teams in superleague over the next few years with the rule changes. I think we have made a good headstart in that respect over most others.

before the season started i was very worried about the depth of our squad, but the young'uns have come on better than we could've hoped and filled the void and are challenging the senior players for 1st team places, making them work harder, which is all good

I did mean in terms of inexperience. If one or two of the starting 17 get injured leading up to a big game, i feel we would struggle to win the game as we would have to put a kid in. As you say, hopefully this will give us a head start for the future, but if as is been said, we have cap space available, then why not keep Gilmour and bring in a few players that will give us more strength in depth and it would also allow us to us the kids a bit more wisely rather than be forced to use them, when we may not want to.

Because it is there to be used, and if we can afford to use it then why not have the extra option of Gilmour to give us more depth in the squad.