rlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/super_league/bradford/8361832.stmrl

Great. Bradford's answer to the problem of our international uncompetitiveness is to bring in a 31 year-old halfback on a 3 year contract which will make him almost certainly the best paid player at the club, while letting Sam Burgess go to Oz. I wonder if Burgess was asking more than quarter of a million per year ?

Orford says : "I always wanted to finish my career in England", and that sums up pretty much everything that's wrong with this signing, and signings like it.

Great player no doubt. But thats near enough 1/5 of their salary cap on one player.

Exactly.

The whole "signing Aussies will ruin our game" argument is complete and utter rubbish and I wish people would stop complaining about EVERY overseas signing and stating this reason, it's complete and utter rubbish.

crap signing

Bad signing imo.

Orford isn’t all he’s cracked up to be imo. He’s won the Daily M award a season back but other than that what else really has he done? Has he set the world alight playing for the green and golds? What about his origin performances over the years as well? What about his performances last season?

I’m not saying he aint gonna be a good SL half back but the wages he’s on are laughable imo. Putting all this cash into one 31 year old player is NEVER going to get Bradford back to where they once were sadly.

It seems they are going down the road my club was on a few seasons ago by looking to Aus to solve all their problems and it just won’t work.

Although not as good as a player they should imo have gone for Brough and built a team around him instead.

£840k for 3 years

aaaaahahahahahahahaha

Loads of players on that sort contract good signing for the bull but poor for English rugby.

Really? Like who?

Buderus
Barrett was aswell
Matt King
Stuart Fielden

Why do we have to bring old players? There must be a younger scrum half who's benefited from NRL coaching (which presumably is what the argument put earlier relates to) who would cost less. Someone who knows they aren't going to get a sniff in an Aussie international shirt.

And to repeat others - 3 years!!

So on past record you've a 50-50 chance of completely wasting your cash, a 25% chance of getting a decent player who can't perform fully because the rest of the team is so weak due to you having spent all your salary cap on that one player, and a 25% chance of a guy who's influential when he's not crocked, and is getting crocked more often these days because he's getting on a bit. Nice business.

I didn't say Bradford were solely responsible for England's lack of competitiveness, but like all teams they have one in 13 of the places available for England-qualified players.

Nor do I condemn all overseas signings. A class signing of a young player who's at the top of his game is never a bad thing because it increases the quality and intensity of the competition. But do any of us really think Orford is going to be playing at the top of his game when he's 34 ? Yet he'll still be earning £250k per year which could be being spent on producing/retaining those young English players who you argue don't currently exist.

Identifying and developing really talented youth costs money and involves taking risks. Saying "they're not there now, so we have to spend our cash on a retiring Aussie" thus becomes a vicious circle.

DEFINATELY not.
Biggest load of printed codswallop ever that one.
I doubt Buderus is too, not sure about the other two though