+1

A tough job for him to take on, as has been said much will be dependant upon how many of the current squad remain.

I think the comparisons with us will be valid if you end up having to put a scratch side together. It clearly took Denis Betts half a season to get our "scratch" squad reasonably competitive. So ours was a very high risk approach and the Club admitted that they had originally wanted an experienced Australian coach in charge with DB as his assistant being groomed to replace him.

Lets hope Mr Cummins is as good and as ready as Mr Potter thinks. Clearly a great "backs to the wall" spirit carried the players on through the season (with the bubble bursting only when the future had been assured!). Can Cummings generate something similar for next season? Best of luck to him, I wish him well, although naturally not so well that you finish above us in 2013!

Three pages in and noone has given him ten games yet? What's that all about?

Well done FC and all the best.

Best of luck Franny i hope you can bring the best out of the team, who will be your assistant LSH!!!

10 Games next season. That will be a fair assessment on whether he can motivate the players and get them playing to some sort of decent structure.

We have a winner....

Well done and good luck Franny.

Good for him to get his chance after showing the loyalty he did. 7 years assistant also gives him far more experience than anyone else who we may have appointed at 35ish.

He's got the play-making positions largely in place (1,7,9) and familair with each other and, while we're going to need significant recruitment in the front row, if we can agree deals with the majority of the ooc players I think we should be competitive in most games.

We may have to look at the Championship for a few players. Players are there, you just need to get the right ones.

Look at Chris Hill at Wire - been excellent this year and had already had a go at SL.

I've not seen too much of the championship to have a full view on it, but I have seen Fax a few times and been impressed by the likes of Sam Barlow, Sean Penkywicz. A few of the lads at Fev look as though they could step up too, players like Liam Finn, Stuart Dickens.

I know the likes of Dickens etc are a bit long in the tooth (he's about 32/33 I think), but these were meerly examples of where we may need to go short term as you would expect most players to be signed up already.

In terms of us losing / playing with a 2/3rds playing budget compared to last season, it's probably not that difficult to chop / maintain a squad similar to last year. If we remove / lose Sykes (I suspect we were paying some of his wage while he was at Wakey), Burgess, Jeffries, Sibbitt, Hargreaves, Sammut, Elima, Briggs, Walker, Kopout, Crookes, possibly Purtell then you lose a vast amount of salary cap.

When you look at the amount of time Sibbitt, Walker, Sykes, Purtell, Kopout actually played for us last year we'd have been better off with one or two solid lower end SL players who had a good injury record.

Given where we are in proceedings, I think will have to look at a smaller squad, possibly losing our better players when contract renewals come around, UNLESS our kids come through and boost the first team (ala Bateman). These guys will be cheap short term for a few years and we then may be able to push into the play-offs. Generating more money, increasing support / sponsorship and enticing players to stay and targets to come.

It will be a long few years. Personally I think it's too big a job for Franny as it stands - he needs a very good number 2. Time will tell I suppose, but best of luck to him

Problem with a skinny squad is injuries as we have seen a few years ago

And problem with a big squad is that we won't be able to afford it.

Solution?

I wonder if OK made the comment about paying the full cap before the 50% cap on the Sky money became known?