Interesting, we certainly won't be short of front rowers!

Seems a bit odd. We already had 6 bona fide props. Did we really need a seventh?

Take it there must be some long term injuries

Or maybe someone is leaving either through injury or signing for another club.

I don't know anything though, but with Salford and Hull KR with injuries and prop shortages for example I am wondering if a team or two has been sniffing around.

What this also does is gives us an extra home grown player.

I don't know what rules apply in the Championship but we only have 7 with O'Brien, Olbison, Addy, Mellor, Conroy, Brook and Bates. (Although Halafihi may qualify at some point in the future if he stays with us)

Either way, I'll be very interested to see how Crossley has developed, he wasn't the best for us before in 2010 but he's had rave reviews at Featherstone.

Never really got a look in with us. Looked ok pre season but when he has played he's only been given 10-15 minute spells if that. I'd of liked to have given him more of a chance but obviously Powell didn't.

Our current props are - Clough & Sidlow - both playing well, proven SL quality. Fleming & Tahraoui - both started slowly but have been improving over the last few weeks. Although I would have Tahraoui ahead of Fleming. Davies looked good in the preseason games he played then was injured. And Lauaki. There must be an SL club sniffing around Clough or Sidlow I would assume. I know players will have SL release clauses built in but I would have thought the time frame for them would try to stop midseason moves.

His SL stats look OK. I can't see us allowing a regular starter go to a SL club. Fleming and Tahrouie are developing nicely so I can only see one of Davies or Lauaki leaving. A bit of a surprise tbh.

solid enough signing but seems a strange use of any spare salary cap. would have thought backup for halves would have been priority. Suspect we're going to see someone leaving or a long term injury announced. If players have SL get out clauses then we may not have any choice in who departs so don't see that sidlow or clough would be off limits. That said it may be that if one of senior guys does go we actually end up with more cap space available than before as Crossley is almost certainly on less money. Wonder if a swap deal with a prop departing and a half inbound could be on the cards.

The key bit of information that we don't have, is whether we enquired about Steve being available, or if it was Cas who were offering Steve out to other clubs. Don't forget they have just signed Ryan Bailey, so it might be the case that they needed to offload Steve to make way.
If that is how it played out, then fair enough. Maybe our club is just being prudent in a) getting a prop signed up for 2016 early doors and b) increasing our home grown roster as Hindle mentioned above.

If, however, we were asking around for any available loan players (remember this deal initially started as just a loan), then that would suggest that we either have a long term injury or a departure.

I guess time will tell on that front.

Anyway going back to Steve as a player, I think he has certainly improved since he was here last, and his name was one I was mentioning as a potential signing during the off season. He went well for Fev last season (their player of the year I think) and looked ok at the start of this season when he played for Cas.
Where does he sit in the pecking order for our props? Hard to say right now, but it looks like he's straight in to face Doncaster on Sunday so let's see how he goes.

very Poor for us, but from the sounds of the Bull's press release he didn't want to be at Cas. Interesting Signing for you guys.

Does the idea of players having a 'SL get out clause' have any basis in fact? I'd be extremely surprised if we'd allow our season to be totally destabilised by allowing players to leave as they wished. Sounds mad.

I doubt would want to allow such a clause in the first 12 months of a contract. That being said however, I would imagine that there are certain players on long term deals who will have a clause to allow them to leave if Bradford don't win promotion, the flip side of which would be that their contracts would increase in value should the club return to SL

I think, [i'if a SL club comes in for me'[/i, clauses are far from uncommon in in the championship but in our circumstances, certainly for the first year, it seems unbelievable that we'd sign players on that basis, given that the SL clubs most likely to come in for them would be our competitors in the eights. It would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we allowed such as Wakefield, for instance, to take any of our players.

I too would expect those clauses to be something along the lines of allowing them to leave for an SL team in the close season (for those on more than 1 year deals), rather than up sticks in the middle of the season.