Brian Smith has worked miracles at Wakefield, they are now as bad as us

Bullseye,very good post

Whoever gets the last promotion place,whether it be us, Wakie, Leigh, Halifax, I don't think anybody would be favourites to come straight back down. Of course they would be favourites to finish in the bottom 4 but would be able to strengthen sufficiently enough to finish in the top 4 of the Middle 8 play offs next season

Bullseye' assessment is based on fact BUT on the basis of what we've seen so far this season has Lowes improved the players he's had at his disposal?

Would you give him the extra playing budget confident that he would correctly identify the areas of greatest need and rectify them, in order that we achieve promotion? Or in perfectly possible event we go up, aspire to 8/9/10th and thereby get 4 home games?

Sorry, but I wouldn't. HOWEVER, were he to get us up I think he'd have earned the chance.

TBF I think AOB and Tom Olbison have improved a lot this season.

As a team though we haven't improved or become more consistent.

However how much is thst down to players being simply not being good enough?

I think it's fair to say that the relegated team would still have the advantage of having played a full season at SL intensity against SL teams, which is a fair advantage, as I think we have shown this season.

I liked the idea of having two seasons between P&R to allow the promoted team time to get up to speed. An Alternative might be to allow a higher foreign quota to the promoted team to mitigate the fact that virtually all contracts are long since sorted out, before the team going up can join the feeding frenzy.

Sounds like you've been reading Garry "biased as hell and has not got a Scooby f'ing Doo about rugby league" Schofield's column in League Express!!

Olbison, good shout. AOB's gone backwards since mid-season and Lowes' use of the kid resulting in pretty much nothing from dummy half in our last two is huge black mark against him in my view. To end up with no halves and a hooker making 40+ tackles is absurd.

Some of them clearly aren't good enough but surely you'd want to see more than one player kick on in a divison below where they played last year.

Think Olbison has really come on this year, his breaks have gotten us some tries, signing Halifihi then not using him in certain games we should win lets say its stupid totally lets O'Brien with no back up who i bet cannot wait to rest at the end of the season.

What's the total salary value of all the players we have signed but who Jimmy simply will not use, Ebola outbreaks excepted?

If we hadn't signed any of them, how much salary cap would we have had to poach a decent half from somewhere?

The salary cap only applies to players who have played a competitive game for us in the season I think. There will be several players who have been here all through pre-season, maybe a friendly as well, but they don't actually count on the cap.

If they set foot on the pitch in a competitive game, their entire salary for the season would immediately count on the cap.

Which is why I think we are obviously spending the cap limit (£1m), but I think our playing staff wages (at least until loans started happening) is probably more - ie £1.1m. I think this explains what has happened to Davies, Petersen, Conroy & Brook.

Not Conroy, who has played competitively (sub away at Batley), but perhaps Bates.

That can't be right. Why would we ever sign a raft of players on the basis that we do have to pay their wages, but they can never set foot in a competitive game?

Bates/Brooks didn't develop as planned? Davies/Petersen training stats didn't match their youtube highlights reel? quota?

You get 3 or 4 months with them before the first competitive game of the season.

An early injury then squad reassessment means you're suddenly surplus to requirements?

If for example you're on £40k for the season, but 6months have passed and you've not played, then the opportunity arises for the coach to sign 2 players about April/May time, both on £20k for the next 6months.

The £40k player is effectively benched, taken off the 25man squad that the RFL hold and unless he gets a loan arranged, is going to be paid without playing.

Or maybe I'm just overanalysing this....

It used to be that the cap applied just to the top 25 earners, not sure about now though as that was in SL. I've never heard of it not applying to blokes who don't play, and to be honest it sounds a bit too sensible for the RFL.