That, along with Beaver was a gamble that went the wrong way for us. Understandable at the time, but consequently characteristic of our luck over past four or so years. Beaver a little more unforgivable, but same sort of thing.

Disagree. His injuries were of the kind you get when you put your body on the line, not those of someone whose body is fekked.

At the time, I was happy to go along with the club's judgment. With hindsight, I was wrong. And so was the club.

Same with Beaver.

Was told the injury excuse was just a smoke screen for him been released.

I would say that the two main signing problems were Harris and Orford.

Harris because of the financial damage it did to us and the loss of top quality homegrown players as well as hamstring our recruitment in the following years.

Orford because of his utter contempt for the club which lead to the "will he won't he" situation where again, when it comes to recruitment, our hands are tied as we don't know how much salary cap space we have spare and what positions we need to recruit for. This also was not helped by the fact we were changing head coaches and the coach we were getting was coming in from another club so wasn't able to fully concentrate on recruitment for his new club.


Hopefully, next years recruitment will not be as slapdash.

I can't remember the players, other than the ones you mention, but IIRC Ryan was about fifth choice in the centres when he left, and letting him go was pretty inevitable. To be honest, as others have said I don't think he's [ithat[/i brilliant; he looks good in a good side but is far from a world beater.
One I would disagree with is Wardle. I don't think we "let him go" as such, I think we were simply outbid by someone with more cash to throw at the juniors (which he then was) than we had. Not quite so sure about Larne Patrick but I'd guess the same applied there too.

Inexplicably losing to Wakefield and seeing them stay up because of it therefore costing us about 100k to get Solomona who we would probably have gotten for nowt had we beaten them and relegated them.

Yup, that was a stinker.

I saw Atkins play a few acadamy/alliance games in the year or so before he left. Looked a decent player at that level but certainly not a future international.

He seems to me to be the mirror image of Donaldson ie Donaldson = very talented junior but stopped growing once we signed him, Atkins = decent junior who then had growth spurt around the time he left us.

A couple for me
Tame Tupou - turning circle of a bus
Nick Zsiti ( a few year since now) - He made me laugh. The first fans signing he did had to go inside as he was cold....

Shaun Edwards...was never really gonna work..Tame toupu....never did any work .

Shame his metres made and tackle bust's don't back that up.

11. Pattrick Ah Van