Losing Brian, getting macca

When Matt Orford was in the side though it showed us what having a quality half back does for a team. And in the Atkins point, he we did have Hape & Ben Harris at the time. Oh what would we do to have Ben Harris back in the side. You can't keep all your youth develoment players and Atkin is playing in by far and away the best side

The Atkins argument requires a heck of a lot of hindsight for me. He wasn't getting a sniff and in team containing Shontayne and Ben Harris (who gets far too much stick for my liking) and Leon for a time as well, so it was in everyone's best interests at the time he moved on. Yes, it's come back to bite us on the , but it took about three or four years to.

I agree with all the rest totally though.

The thing with Atkins, he's hardly a world beater or even a outstanding centre. He's getting world class service at Wire though. Put him in our team or Wakeys and he's nothing.

Agreed with that.

He was decent at Wakefield, I remember him scoring plenty for them - which was obviously why he was courted by Warrington.

But I agree its a heck of lot easier for him to score tries in a team that is going forward and with half backs that are putting him in the gaps.

I can live with us letting Atkins and Wardle go, as has been said previous, they are nothing special and are fortunate to be playing in world class sides.

I think the one that hurts the most is George Burgess, leaving before he'd even played a single SL match. Tom is making great strides in his debut season and it is widely believed that George was the more talented of the twins. In a few years time if we had Tom, George and Koppy all in the side we would be a real force up front. Such a shame.

morrison was the right decision given his injuries

Signing Ah Van must be up there..

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.