Swinton always used to be a cut price Leigh. Same dirty style but none of the flair. I don't know if that's still their preferred style but that sort of thing was easy to get sucked into.

at least we wont have to listen to that annoying fan of theirs. Allows takes his shirt off no matter what the weather and spends entire match chanting swinton,swinton,swinton,....

This is where we find out he's actually a director and is still their on the ourleague stream

I hope he does come good. I guess I'm still annoyed that he would be in that state in the first place after apparently training with us for a year already.

If we want to beat Swinton we need to put plenty of pressure on Ridyard. He's their main man.

I agree. He's improved from 0% to about 30% fit and you can definitely see a good player in there. Little bits are leaking out about the pre-season which whilst a bit disappointing suggests we have a ton of improvement in us. We're still tailing off second half and playing a bit narrow. Kear was right to go with 6 props but now with Levy missing and with Brough's passing I'd like to see us go a bit wider and see the centres come onto a decent shift move.

[quoteI hope he does come good. I guess I'm still annoyed that he would be in that state in the first place after apparently training with us for a year already.

If we want to beat Swinton we need to put plenty of pressure on Ridyard. He's their main man.'"

What have you heard?

Brough said post Dewsbury the pre-season wasn't great and Wood said they weren't able to train together prior to Sheffield.

Interesting. Explains things a bit without going into the reasons why. Hopefully that's all behind us now.

Looking at the injuries if Fleming and Scurr are fit it makes a big difference. Without them both and England it's a completely different matter and we all know how the quality dips when you lose a few.

I'm not sure if we have any cash, I suspect Anthony England's retirement didn't come out of the blue and some of his money may have been directed at the Ben Evans signing. I agree we could do with another forward. Olbison would be a great signing if he's available.

Every club had the same guidelines to follow though. Not sure why it would detriment us more than anyone else.

Depends how closely followed those guidelines were by each club.

Some will have followed them to the letter, others I have my doubts. Wasn't really possible for the RFL to monitor everyone's training was it.

That'd be a shame because I don't think we're far off if we keep improving/get fit. A prop, centre, hooker on loan would really throw us in the mix. Toulouse might have trouble with the fixtures and Fev are still Fev.

I don't know for sure but we were either outbid or didn't bid for Tangata or Keyes who would've improved the squad and could've helped fill a couple of those positions

On the fitness front clearly some clubs were much better prepared than us at the beginning of the season. It'd be interesting to know how they did it if all were following the rules in place.

We did bid for Tangata but as I understand he always wanted to go back to Fax

I'd be surprised if Keyes even considered coming back to us, even on loan, considering the missed pension payments under Chalmers. We all know who was pulling Chalmers strings in background and would imagine for all players affected it would be a case of once bitten twice shy.

Good point. Given that players talk to each other it may have put others off too. We did well to get anyone.