It started about six years ago. The decision to move Wellens from fullback should have been made before the first Grand Final with Leeds. At that stage there was only really me calling for it, but it was blindingly obvious he was hurting us.

From there onwards the recruitment decisions were abhorrent, the club perhaps rightly were focused on the stadium. Despite this, they still spent the cap, they just did a really, really poor job of it.

What Saints needed to do was come up with a plan to replace Wellens, Long, Cunningham, Pryce and Sculthorpe and managed to not replace any of them bar Cunningham.

Ok may be it went wrong when the likes off long Cunningham graham gidley etc etc decided to leave.And they are irreplaceable current players brought in to replace them are simply not good enough you will just have to suffer for a while like a lot off other clubs

So are you saying that you are happy with him now out of the FB position and at HB ?

Honestly when Millward left.

Thats when recruitment totally went upstairs.

In my mind weve had 4 irreplacable players Cunningham, Scully, Graham, Lyon.

Weve got as close to Cunningham with Roby.

But thats 3 world class players to replace.

Then you look at the Longs Pryces etc

Still top class players but replaceable with class.

We havent done that.

Some of the spending decisions you can understand as a result of the stadium process - not making the most of the last season and the move to widnes in particular - hurt us.

But alarmingly for me now we have the venue the team building should have begun.

A few people have said this but it reminds me of the boards approach in the eighties - sticking plasters , gambles and on the cheap.

Albeit we have far better quality kids coming through and we do have the salary cap.

Our salary cap policy seems to be keeping average players to the ten year mark so we can halve their wages on the cap.

The wello situation is a tough one too.

Hes a fullback and a player for a different era. He has talent still but where do you play him in the modern game.

We need one or two proven quality players to augment the youth talent and kickstart us again.

This is the Newlove moment.

That we now have NO experienced scrum half at the club is a disgrace.

There is part of me that wonders is Eamonn really wants this anymore.

In his eyes its HIS club and were not that grateful.

He has done a fabulous job steadying the club financially and building a new stadium , but to rebuild a team in its current state will take a lot of energy and money.

The 50% dispensation for 10 years only applies to one player per team.

For me, it went wrong when Daniel Anderson left. I think this season's a write off already, but I'm optimistic for next season with Perry and Laffranchi leaving, and with us being linked to Broughton, to replace Gardner/Meli and Dobson. At least it shows we might be starting to replace players leaving.

I hope you are right.

If I remember correctly, last year was supposed to be our re-building year.

Me too, I think and hope, this'll be our last transition year IF we pick up the best OOC contract SL players and use our 3 quota spots that will become available.

Poor recruiting, especially to replace Jammer and Eastmond.
Signing Lance Hohaia as a half was ludicrous. Signing Laffranchi as prop was poor.

i thought hohaia was going to be a decent signing then he arrived and well you know how the story goes. Last season i think we over achieved in a sense and maybe certain people thought we werent in such bad shape but this season has been a big reality check surely theres going to be loads of ins and outs this off season there needs to be.

We've got a half decent tent, we've just got no pegs to hold it up.

We need 2 halves. Desperately. And for whatever needs to be changed in our conditioning to stop so many of our players being ****ing well injured so often. There's not a long wrong with the squad by contemporary quality standards otherwise and a hell of a lot more right with it.

By far and away the biggest mistakes we've made in the last few years were committing our future to Eastmond and Wheeler and dumping Smith (although I still maintain that anybody would have made exactly the same decision at the time) and offing Pryce for Hohaia (was a strange move at the time and just keeps getting stranger every week). Some of the other big signings haven't worked out (Shenton, Perry) but they were signings anyone would have made at the time and you can't really level too much criticism at them either - **** just happens sometimes.

Our recent coaching appointments haven't been great either (jury's still out on Brown), but in modern SL you can't sign a top-quality proven Aussie coach and there are few suitable British candidates so taking a chance on a lesser-known quantity is just a fact of life. Sometimes it works (Maggie at Pies) and sometimes it doesn't (Potter and Royce) - again, hard to criticise the board too harshly.

Basically, our management dropped a huge, massive, unforgiveable clanger over Pryce/Hohaia that we'll be paying for for another 2.5 years. Otherwise it's been a bit unlucky with a few critical decisions. It needs to stop being unlucky and soon...