hope this works 1st post,i think the boards concentration has been for the past few years has been on the stadium,player recruitment has come second,which has been poor,perry when signed was an aussie international /state of origin prop obviously he's on good money,sadly he's turned out to be championship material at best and we've got another year to put up with his lacklustre performances because no NRL club in their right mind would take him off our hands.Lance who the hell in the right mind gave him a 4 year deal,a player that does'nt excel in any position he's played either for NZW or NZ.He must have thought he'd won the lottery when we offered him a 4 year deal for a jack of all trades master of none at 29 years old.
Obviously laffranchi was signed to play in his natural position as a 2nd rower,but with jammer leaving and griffin backtracking on us,he,s had to try and bulk up and play prop which to a certain extent against the lesser teams he's done,but sadly he's found it hard against the top sides.Chris Hill was a risk no doubt but he was'nt going to be expensive,stefan ratchford was out of contract and was already showing great talent in an average team,so for next years recriutment we've got Manu replacing Flannery yep manu is a big plus ,but thank god the rumours we were offering him a 3 year deal to him proved false,Jordan Turner does not inspire me at all,if its true he was desperate to get to the sweet smelling side of the pennines then i hope he's come cheap

So... We've been saving money and doing player recruitment on the cheap to pay for the stadium, [iand[/i we've been spending big money on Aussie internationals... Care to consider that logic there matey?

Tell you whatThen you will be in a position to criticise our board members for not doing the same, and not before.

You are a complete idiot, I'm not on the board at saints so why shouid I put my money into the club, the board members signed up to be on the board just th Warrington board members have but they are prepared to put their hands in the pockets to buy plsyers.

I'm not saying its right or it's wrong that our board members don't pay transfer fees but the point I'm making to you is, the Warrington board will put their hands in their pockets which surley means they have more ambition as a board.

If saints wish to go down the youth policy way, then great let's take that risk but it wound be common sense from McManus not to bang on about having a "team to grace the new stadium"

The team to grace the stadium involved eastmond, pryce, graham and koror leaving and replaced them with hohaia, Laffranchi and flanaghan, not exactly inspiring.

Oh, by the way, Laffranchi was signed as a prop from day one, the fact we messed up with griffin had no bearing on Laffranchi playing prop.

We have been through all of this before, with neighbours spending far more on players, and our shorter sighted speccies bemoaning the fact that we aren't going toe to toe with them. I remeber people complaining how we weren't competing in the transfer market with the Goons and Widnes in the 80s and early 90s. Thank god we didn't. Anyone who is looking at Warrington's finances now has to wonder how they are making ends meet, and staying under the salary cap, it would be fooolish to try to emulate what they are doing with wages and fees. What McManus is doing, is building a club that is sustainable, and will be here for our kids to enjoy. Warrington are buying short term success, much as Widnes and the Goons did. I know which club I would sooner support. As Winston Churchill said, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

So we admit we're a smaller club and don't even try to win competitions? Are they going to put that blurb on the season ticket promotions?

All this talk of Warrington and Wigan spending more than us is exaggerated. Neither have spent significant amounts on transfer fees, certainly no more than we could have done. Signing the likes of Atkins, Ratchford and Hill cost an amount I could personally have met if I really needed to, it's not a serious amount of money. We either don't have the ambition to win trophies ever again or we don't have a board/management capable of building a squad. The short to medium term future isn't looking great for us, the milestone of 10 years of winning nothing will soon be passed and we'll soon forget what finals were like.

Alternatively the club could start to maximise the revenue potential of the stadium, start making money and start signing the right players. When the next Chris Hill emerges, make sure it's us who he chooses. When the gems from the NRL crop up, and they still will, make sure it's us. Make sure whoever thought signing Lance Hohaia and Laffranchi are no longer at the club and find the drive and ambition to succeed we used to have during the Millward years.

A lot of you are looking at Saints in too cold a light, in purely sustainable business terms. Sport isn't like that, the company only exists to enable the team to be successful. If you have to compromise the team for the company, there really is no point competing at all.

Would you pump large sums of cash into a business that you only owned a very small percentage of while people who owned a much larger share of it didn't/couldn't? If I owned 70% of Saints outright then I'd happily pump in millions of my own cash no questions asked. If I owned 20% then I wouldn't unless the other owners were contributing similarly. And I wouldn't expect to be criticised for it.

The way I look at it, it's a sporting cycle. How you manage the down side of that cycle is key. If you don't manage the down side then that is when those sporting sides throw good money after bad and end up going bust. We are competing just not at the top flight. If you don't compromise the team for the company, then the team will not exist. It's a partnership between club and team neither can exist in isolation. Otherwise teams would just chew up and spit out money men and in RL that is a rather short list.

I understand that but we're in a salary capped sport, where the clubs can spend no more on salaries than we are now. So it's not like an enormous amount of investment is required. We're not talking £400,000 for Newlove here, £10,000 for Chris Hill would have enabled him to play prop, Laffrachi to play second row etc. What is disappointing me is that when these talented young players crop up as being available, they are never heading here. It's Warrington, Wigan, Leeds, Hull before us. It'll be interesting to see where Bateman goes, another of the potentially great young players and exactly the kind of player we would have been after 10-15 years ago.

And, lest anyone forget, we did go out and compete wholeheartedly with the loony spending in the transfer market in the '90s for a while and very, very nearly completely ceased to exist as a club as a result - there would be no Saints and no LP at all if not for Big Mac and Co. saving us from the consequences of that folly. Wigan and Widnes both paid for their years of mortgaged glory with near extinction, and the loss of their stadium and 20 years of lower league hand-to-mouth struggle respectively. Bradford spent money they didn't have buying trophies too until very recently - their birds are coming home to roost for that now. We don't know their exact financial situation, but who's to say Warrington aren't living beyond their means at the moment and may pay for it similarly in years to come?

We've lost 4 million quid in 2 years out of a business with an annual turnover of probably 5 million maximum... That, in any other sphere of existence, would be a business the banks would have closed down years ago. We are only still trading because of the "ambition" and willingness of our board members to dip into their pockets to make ends meet. I thank them for it and wouldn't care if we never paid another transfer fee so long as it meant our continued existence at their hands.

Maurice Lyndsay would be proud of you. Wigan existed for 100 years until he decided that success was important than the club, and for a very brief period in the club's history, he had massive success. Wigan will never recover from it. The will never own their own stadium, and because of that, they will fall behind clubs with far greater revenue streams like Saints, Warrington and Leeds. If you want 5 minutes of glory, then fine, spaned more than you can afford. I don't. I want Saints to be here as a competitive club for my kids and grand kids to enjoy.

The fans of Portsmouth, Rangers, Bradford Bulls, Chester City, Darlington, Rushden etc. etc. all say "hi - welcome to the party" by the way...

Anyway you try and dress it up, our recruitment and retention has been poor for past 5 years and it's going to get even worse pretty soon when TP, Perry, laffranchci all coming off contract at the same time as well as others.

I'll put money on us promoting youngsters in and not finding quality replacements.

So put your money in then as I suggest