At the moment I would ask anyone to consider the question, if a half-fit LV played against Sheriffe, who do you think would come out on top? I wish Rikki well, and hope he improves leaps and bounds, but if I were picking the team, I'd pick Les every time.

I'd take him over Sheriffe With wooden legs, nevermind dodgy knees. If he wanted to come back and was fit enough then i'd take him, Wing is our weakest area in the team atm imo.

Let's not forget the popularity factor in all of this, Lesley returning to Odsal would certainly increase the numbers through the gates.

I expect McNamara has a reasonable idea of just how bad his knee's are and whether he has a couple more years left in the tank. If he isn't asking silly money and is in decent condition then I would hope we would give serious consideration.

Perhaps I am just desperate to see a new winger!

But he wouldn't be a new winger though! (Ooops I'm sounding like Tigertot!)

Heart no head yes (at the right price, salary cap and quota permitting). I'd rather see Les a shadow of himself in his glory days but doing a job we need doing than him doing that same job for someone else.

thats the obvious block to any talk of les returning. AFAIK he left for union a year before the new quota rules and the cutoff date for him to re-classified as federation trained. He had to be playing in SL when the quota rules changed as I understand it. so if he came back he count as a full overseas quota player. Doubt anyone would use a full quota spot on a player with LV's injury record and age.

Can anyone realistically see Les playing for anything like an affordable package? Given the money available in Union?

The only way you'd get Les, I suspect (and assuming quota space...) is if you got some friendly "totally unconnected" business to pay his personal service company megabucks for his image rights, and as a result he'd be happy to play for a small package. (No...really...).

That is not impossible given Les' very high profile and marketability, so for anyone signing him I'd worry less about the cap space and more about finding this unconnected third party - which would surely be a bit tricky given there is supposed to be no connection...

Wakefield Trinity keen to bring Lesley Vainikolo back to Super League

rlhttps://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/jan/18/wakefield-trinity-lesley-vainikolorl

Well, I'd rather have a new winger than a new whinger.

This smacks to me of PR by the Wakefield club? If Kear knows it's unlikely Les will even contemplate such a move, believing he will already be well on with tying up his next Union deal, then why raise the possibility at all?

Remember that Wakey still have the adjourned winding-up hearing to get through and all that. It hasn't gone away, you know.

Methinks this may be Wakey spin to suggest to the world that they have no financial worries and are dead ambitious and can swim in the same pond as the sugar-daddied clubs?

In any case though, Kear's comments allude very much to a short-term deal over the Union close season? That could be practicable for them if they have cap space and can get a sponsor to stump up?

Don't suppose we put any contracts in place with Les so that if he returned to League it had to be to us, and if anyone "cohersed" him away we'd be in line for some serious compo...?

If Vainikolo can demonstrate his fitness to be able to cope with RL and be better quality than what we already have then we should be interested. However if he's wants a large amount of cash we have to balance that against the needs of the team and whether it would be better spent developing one of our own or looking elsewhere. Like Adey I doubt whether we could afford him and making the effort to try and bring him back might be difficult given the need to attract sponsorship and the danger that it could bring up cap and tax issues.

Personally I'd say no. I think that boat has sailed. Les was a great servant for us but we had his best years. I doubt it would be good for us to bring him back when he's older, slower and more injury prone, even if close to the line he'd offer more of a threat than any other winger we have at the moment.

Better we spend any cash we have on finding the next Vainikolo rather than bringing back the old one.

Not many RU players come across and are fit enough for TGG imho. Big Les, for all the respect (as a person and player) and what he helped us achieve, wasn't in the best of nick before he left us. . . . so I'd have to say no . . . . unless he's v. cheap, fit, injury free and able to fit within any prevailing restrictions (and not necessarily in that order)

That's exactly what I thought. But fair play to them - it seems to me half the battle of being a big club is hyping yourself up to be a big club even if you're not. From then on its like a snowball rolling down a hill until you actually ARE a big club.

That made sense in my head.

Surely you'd be a big SNOWBALL?

But it made sense in my head too, which is distinctly worrying...

I think all the talk of Les coming back as a winger seems to be ignoring the fact that currently he plays in the forwards at union so will almost certainly not have been doing any speed training. It would be very very difficult for him to regain even some of the pace that made him so formidable before he left(I think we can assume he still has the bulk ), of course he could play prop perhaps? Even then the harder summer grounds would take their toll on his knees. It all sounds a forlorn hope to be honest.