I would be surprised if a player chose to sign under those circumstances, but I can't see why it wouldn't be possible.

Which was my point from earlier in the thread. Yes, it might be nice for a player to get a wage without having to play, but that's very short term thinking. If you're not playing, you're off the radar of other clubs which might mean having to take a bigger pay cut than you might like if you wait out your current deal before switching clubs.

Better that the club is honest with players who's services are no longer required and do everything they can to facilitate their exit to a new club.

As for the whole 2 contract thing, I assumed that something like that had to be in place before the start of the year given the players we signed who were willing to drop down to play Championship rugby league. It's likely that players such as Gaskell haven't been on a massive wage this year but have been promised a big pay jump if they are successful in getting the club promoted. But I doubt there's players at the club with 2 contracts who aren't going to get that SL contract activated should we go up.

I think we, as a club, were fairly lucky in one extent at the end of last season and that is that there were no promoted clubs taking our place in SL. If there had been, then it's more than likely that a few of our better players who opted to stay [imight,[/i perhaps, have made a different decision. Truth is though, with two clubs going down, that 's [for round figures] around 50 players in the two squads, there was never any chance that the majority of those could ever be fitted into the rosters of a league with two fewer clubs. This, in part at least, has to be how we managed to hold on to as many SL experienced players as we did.

I suspect the next team to come down, if indeed there is one under this system, may not be as fortunate, particularly given the large increases in competition money for SL clubs.

Just like Adam Brook, then.

think assumption was that davies and probably ulugia were de-registered in july to allow signing of ryan and Nielsen on quota. Was never actually announced as such by club though.

On the subject of more props - can I just say that I place more emphasis on dog and determination than i do on sheer size. This is because I (sadly) go back to watching forwards like Jimmy Thompson and Colin Forsyth, who were not big even by 80s standards, but would walk into the pack any SL team today or any day. Because you can't teach what they had.

Also i am not up-to-speed on our youg players, but each new season the young forwards are another year older, bigger and uglier and they do grow at an alarming pace nowadays - do we have any obvious breakthrough candidates?

Here if only we could solve our recruitment problem at a stroke, by signing Alan Redfearn, Colin Forsyth and Jimmy Thompson, all three on this great pic, Redfearn throwing a reverse pass to Forsyth who crashed through two defenders to score a signature try, Jimmy in his trademark headband running the other line.

I do love browsing the Rugby League Heritage Project