What iam saying is, we have some young players who could take us back to the top, with a little help from a few quality international players. Signing journeymen, and having a complete overhaul of the squad every season is no good. If there are no quality players available, then wait till one or more becomes available. It's pointless making signings just for the sake of it.

Paul has just sent me a message asking to add that it's a 1 year contract too (which Connor Murphy has also said about tomorrow's signing on his Twitter).

I don't know. It's making me think about changing my allegiance.

when you put it in isolation like that it sounds fine. put into the greater context where we have halley,finigan and at a stretch crookes able to play wing as well and a massive glaring hole in the squad in the shape of the halves ( or more to the point lack of) then you can see the problem. We have much better squad depth right across the squad excpet for in the 2 most important pivotal positions where we arent even sure who are 1st choice starters are going to be. I just hope the board and potter know what they are doing and we have a signing or two still to announce, or all the squad depth in the world isnt going to help us improve next year.

It's ok having a big squad, but only 17 can play at a time..........

You'd think that to some degree, the exposure the youngsters got this season would mean they'd be in a better position to get more game time next year and be more capable at coping with it. All these "average" we're signing are going to stop the development of the Finigans / Donaldson's of our club.

I'm not denying that some of the players we are signing may turn out good for the club, but at the minute we're looking like signing moe than we're letting go and hence stuttering the development of the youngsters.

From twitter:

paulingham:
@MurphyonBulls A winger right? Surname beginning with R? A former black and white?



MurphyonBulls
@paulingham All I'll say is he's inked a one-year deal.

Unless there is more to it than this it doesn't strike me as conclusive. I also suspect that Connor would have lost his job by now if he revealed his stories so readily prior to going to print.

Hope I'm right and it is not Rayner.

Just out of interest, and in the hope that it's a wind up, why is Paul posting via other people? He's sworn to secrecy isn't he...???

I think the 'inked' makes it fairly conclusive - unless Connor's deliberately mis-leading people.

If this was the end of the squad, I'd agree. But I'll be amazed if there isn't at least one halfback signing at some point.

I read it as confirmation that the signed player is on a one year contract, but not confirmation as to who the player is. Might be wrong, but sounds deliberately non-commital to me.

I don't doubt Paul has predicted Rayner, I'm just hoping that the morning reveals a surprise signing and don't see these twitter postings as conclusive proof that it wont be.

Incidentally, Paul isn't posting at the moment as he's locked out of RLFans. Changed his e-mail address and waiting for an admin to ok it.

He has asked me to mention though that he did post on here before the tweets, saying it was a winger, and that he did tell me privately (which he did) that it was Raynor we'd signed, before any tweets were sent between himself and Connor. He knew earlier in the week and I can back him up on that as he did tell me. (I lied in a previous post when I said I didn't know who it was

)