Fair enough with the Talau - King. Like I said a long time ago and I was at work so doing a bit of guess work.

But with the full internet to my disposal.

Ryan atkins was available a year later who we passed on.
Chev Walker the same..
There were several make shift centre's after 2008.

I can't remember them all but not to replace Talau until (2013) is pretty poor. I've put 2013 in brackets as I've been impressed with Percival, but it's a bit early to jump to conclusions yet.

A fee was paid for Atkins so that ruled us out of the reckoning. Walker isn't what you'd really call "Saints quality" - I'd rather have had Gilmour any day. And it's also supreme arrogance to assume that we should be signing any and every quality player that ever comes onto the market anyway. Every other top SL club is rabidly after any half-way decent centre that ever becomes available due to the appallingly limited selection of same - what divine right do we have to expect to beat everyone else to them every time? We won a fevered bidding war for Shenton - we can't win all of them...

It all went wrong because it all went right.

We achieved so highly for so many years that being just 'one of' the top teams seems like such a disastrous fall. Other clubs weren't just going to stand still and watch us (and Bradford) dominate super league and many have caught us up.

Wigan and Leeds are where they should be, as the biggest clubs in the game. Warrington and Huddersfield (and arguably Catalans) have worked hard and invested to improve.

Our time will come again.

Don't go being all sensible. People will say you have no ambition.

There are good points about mistakes being made, however when people harp on about us not winning silverwear, that's what gets my back up.

We should be better than we are and we should have a halfback. But that does not equate to an automatic right to win finals.

People forget we have only missed one final in all that time, that is success for 99% of clubs.