Aye, whilst solid enough much of the time, the old Lulia seems to have lost his mojo. He's not been to imperious hander-off of defenders that he once was. Maybe he needs a move to get it back.

I think many of us commented last year about not seeing a hand off like it for years, well his party piece worked a treat and now his opponents have worked it out - inevitable, yeah that's the word, I think.

Defensively I still think Lulia is better than Gaskell, even the 2013 model.

As for losing Addy I remain to be convinced about his defence but he has the makings of a good player if he could improve that. Loose forward is as much about defence nowadays as being a good attacker.

I think Lulia is a good defender full stop, and so is Donno and I hope Franny can find a way to ensure he stays too. I'm sure there will be plenty of rotation around the squad with our normal ration of injuries so I don't feel it's one or the other and Lee will add much needed variety to what we do.

I know I'm a bit boring banging on about defending a lot and it's nowhere near as exciting as flicking out backhanded passes [whilst being tipped upside down, etc] but in most matches our opponents are going to have as much time with the ball in hand as we do, so it is fairly important if we want to do well.

I would have thought:

1 Kearney
2 Kear
3 Purtell
4 Blythe
5 Foster / George
6 Sammut
7 Gale
8 Scruton
9 L'Estrange
10 Carvell
11 Bateman
12 Olbison
13 Donaldson

14 Diskin
15 Sidlow
16 Manuokafoa
17 Ferguson

18. Walker
19. Wood/O'brien

Maybe with Foster inside of Kear if he can add some bulk and improve his defense, we are always going to have to rotate due to our horrid injury recurrence.

There is no contract offer to Addy for him to sign,there was,but there isn't now

Having said earlier in the thread that Lulia has been below his best, he was fantastic against Wakey, storming game, and great to see him back in imperious form.

I am sure we would all like Lulia to return home with a GF winners medal

I don't know if it's Addy's short comings or the fact that he's most likely on his way out of the club, but the lad leaves massive gaps in the defensive line. He just watched the Wakey player run past him for their last try.

I know it's nice to have home grown lads who've come up through the system, but I think sentiment needs to give way to reality and that reality is that he's an alright player, but that's all he is.

He's pretty much undeniably better with ball in hand, as he showed yesterday, though, that said, wasn't it Danny who hit Amor causing him to drop the ball? The point being that missing a runner could have been a 'positional' mistake, and a coachable one, rather than one of tackling technique or 'heart'?

At the end of the day though it's the coach's job to come up with these decisions on the comings and goings and to call time if he thinks a player isn't going to improve. Just hope we don't finish up with another Brett Ferres, Ryan Atkins situation and get bitten on the bum.

I think with Atkins we let him go because we had better players than him at the club. We hadn’t seen the impending disaster around the corner so he was allowed to leave (by McNamara IIRC). Similar things applied to Ferres as we used him as a makeweight to get Solomona. Ferres wasn’t a success at Wakey (I think some Wakey fans expected too much from him) but he’s matured into a very good SL player.

Obviously I’d take both back now. I think the difference with Addy is that Addy is a bit older than Atkins and Ferres when they left and I’m not sure how much improvement he has in him. I like to think the right coach could iron our his defensive issues but sometimes you don’t have the option with a limited budget and the salary cap and need for success sooner rather than later.

That's probably 100% correct and I certainly didn't argue about either Brett or Ryan leaving at the time as we clearly had better in the squad. My major point would be that we aren't [even close to being] the club we were when we could, so easily, let those players go, and maybe need to think longer and harder before doing so with others, Like Danny Addy and Donno who it would appear are both set to leave.

Both could be 'bum biters', especially Donno, who I think has the ability, physicality and mental attitude to be a top player. It would be a shame if that happened and it wasn't at Odsal, especially now he seems to be getting over all the injuries. Still, as I say, the coach gets paid to make these decisions..

Agreed.

If we let Addy and Donaldson go I think we may be lacking a bit in the backrow as we’d have the following for 2014

Ferguson
Bateman
Olbison
Walker
Possibly Blythe filling in.
Roberts
Mellor

The last two are very inexperienced. I think we’re lacking some quality and depth here.