Similar to binning off Thompson to facilitate Howarth and binning the opportunity to use Charnock to facilitate O,Brien, we no longer have an injury crisis so why use on loan players that don,t have much impact on a game.

Exactly.

Long was perhaps the best 7 in the league at the time, your comparison is poor. Gaskell wasn't a proven good player, never mind great player, and still isn't. If Gaskell was providing what was needed then he'd still be here, contract signing or not. The fact of the matter is that he wasn't, so he was shipped out at a time when we desperately needed a hooker due to Roby's long term injury.

Charnock is three years younger than O'Brien with less first team experience. Maybe Charnock isn't ready for consistent first team action yet?

Thompson played last week, hardly a case at this point of being binned off. I take it you know how he was performing in training? If we're still saying this in three or four weeks, then you may have a case. At this stage it's too early.

Expecting these kids to play week in week out at this stage of development is the way that they get injured.

Wheeler is the prime example of this. He was playing in the senior academy at 16 years of age. He may have been good enough but was physically not ready and it is likely to be the cause of his fitness problems since.

SF doesn't say Gaskell was a proven good player.

I do not accept that if Gaskell was proving he was what was needed that would equal Saints keeping him. We don't really know whether he was capable or not. His hat trick from full back against a dire London team may hint at some SL capability.
Matty Smith also wasn't good enough for us apparently.

It doesn't matter who you are; if your fact doesn't fit then you will be shipped out, its always been that way. What we don't know if why his face didn't fit - it appears to be more to do with the Geschäftsführer - Rush.

Same in business, it doesn't matter how good you are, if the boss doesn't like you or you are not a bum licker then you have no future with that company.

You simply don't get it so I'll make it more simple for you. Sean Long was a proven match winning scrum half and a Saints great, being that good buy's you some special treatment at times, right or wrong that is a fact of life.

Gaskell is a nobody (in Rugby terms) who has done sod all (so far), he was obviously binned off for some off the field incident or incidents but when you are unproven you are dispensable as Longy found out at Wigan.

Brown binned off Lunt for Moore but that was a like for like positionally with both players having differing styles. You are also forgetting Moore was very good for Hudds on loan previously (getting an international call up).

No she didn't, my mistake.



Had he been performing, I find it hard to believe he wouldn't have been kept given our situation, off field issues or not, given the reported off field issues are not of a major incident such as drugs or something.



At the time that decision was understandable, hindsight is a wonderful thing.



So Brown now doesn't have the final say on who stays in his squad [imid[/i season? If he doesn't have the final say on that, how is he expected to be at fault for our problems this year?

No it isn't because I wasn't comparing ability; I was comparing attitude of the club towards them bearing in mind neither is/was easy to handle.

And if you are suggesting that the club would tolerate bad behaviour from a player just because he is very good but would not tolerate it in a player yet to prove himself then there is still something wrong with the club!

That's exactly what he's saying. It is simply a fact of life that the proven, more talented individuals are given a lot more leeway than young squad players. This does not mean that there is anything wrong with the club, because all clubs would do the same.

Clearly not though because Wigan binned off Hock (and of course they also binned off Longy didn't they?) and that is just one example of the reverse of what you are suggesting. So clearly there IS something wrong at our club.

Oh, and 'more talented' isn't the opposite of 'young'. You can have an extremely talented young player and a totally crap older player. Indeed, we have a few of the latter and yet all of them play regardless of how crap their performances are. That's another thing that is wrong with our club.

Hock told Wane he didnt want to play for Wigan.

Longy was a nobody when Wigan binned him. In fact Wigan give him many chances before they actually binned him. The last one being a pretty bad one to be honest.

That I doubt. Had he in fact said that, Wigan would have been within their legal rights to fire him. I've heard a few different versions of what happened, the most common being a clash between Wane and Hock. But whatever the truth of the matter is (and it won't be Hock refusing to play), he was binned by Wigan while being one of their most valued players.


They still binned him. And from what fans around at the time said, he was recognised as being a real talent by Wigan.

We gave Scott Moore a couple of chances didn't we? Now he had a drinking problem, which is a real problem when you consider the risks on a rugby pitch to self and to others. Yet we bin off Gaskell who hasn't done anything like that apparently (if indeed he has done anything other than been born with a face that doesn't make Mike Rush happy). The decision to let Gaskell go given our circumstances still looks as dumb now as it did when it was made.

She just proved the point the rest of us were making by using the Longy example. If she'd been watching Rugby more than 5 minutes she'd also know Wigan tolerated characters like Hanley many years before because just like Longy at Saints he was special.

The Hock example is another appallingly bad one given they gave him a brand new contract and supported him after he'd been caught sniffing coke If he was a kid like Gaskell he'd have been booted out of the club in a microsecond.