Have we seen the last of the changes to the squad for 2017 ? By 1st November, clubs have to submit a list of players (normally the top 25 in the squad) that comprise their salary cap for the following year. That gives the RFL a few months to wade through the figures and agree / disagree with the clubs calculations. Changes can still be made as they can throughout the year, but it signals the finalising of most clubs plans for the coming season. Last year Warrington issued a list of their 2016 squad on November 10th - so we are getting close.

By my reckoning we have lost 7 squad players and gained 4 (Cooper, Blythe, Crosby, Savelio). We will also pick up Pat Moran from the U19's into the list, so 7 out, 5 in and I suspect two of those 5 will not play a great many games either. Does that seem a bit light for our recruitment ? We must have earned quite a lot of money this year and yet Savelio and Crosby will surely not have cost us more than £80K - so perhaps we are still hoping to lure somebody away to the HJ. Alternatively TS may think our squad is already pretty strong and he needs to play some of the youngsters ; Smith, Patton and Jullien will surely get more game time, whilst Johnson hardly featured and Livett didn't manage a debut. That still leaves Wilde and Philbin, plus perhaps a cc debut for Moran ? Unless somebody gets injured it's going to be a bit of a bun fight in the centres with King, Evans and Atkins all vying for a place so I am looking forward to see the team sheet for our first SL game when TS normally fields his considered strongest team (on paper). My guess will be king and Atkins.

9 out by my count
Gene Ormsby - Huddersfield (Joined July 14 2016 with immediate effect)
Daniel Murray - Salford
James Laithwaite - Toronto Wolfpack
Gary Wheeler - Toronto Wolfpack
Ben Evans - London Broncos
Mitchell Dodds - Brisbane Broncos
Jordan Cox - Released
Ryan Bailey - Released
Sean Kenny - Salford

Is it possible some can't be named till after the four nations is over Charlie ,especially if we've signed some Aussie or NZ superstars ?

Good summary from Offload but surely the amount of money we have earned this year is pretty irrelevant. No matter how much money we have got we can't spend over the Salary cap on players' wages.

league express today, smith says no more signings, consistency in the squad, just tinkering additions.

That being said, on page two, main article is Leigh moaning about not being able to sign ben harrison due to his current 6 figure valuation/Salary cap rulings.

Arent plans already underway for BH's testimonial ? St Roccos Hopsice has already been named as one of the charities benrfitting from it. Wouldnt that iondicate he's not going anywhere in 2017 ?

Thats what i thought as well

I'd be guessing we're pretty much there. Ok on the pitch we see that we're a couple of backs away from a formidable team, but we don;t have a problem scoring and we don;t have a problem defending. What we have is the problem of things going pear shaped when we take our front row off and replace them with players no where near the quality we take off.

Now swapping Bailey, Cox, Dodds, for Cooper & Crosby for me does that job much better than the season just gone. And to be fair we were in contention for everything this year and our signings will only improve us.

I was only talking about our squad (numbered) players. I think Kenny and Murray were only retained to provide a core of players for the Reserves and to try and find them a club such that they were not lost from RL.



Good point, but we don't know how much of our cap has been used up. Plus, the additional money we earned this year could be used to bring in quality fringe players to strengthen the depth of the squad - we wouldn't have to pay these top whack. You could almost drop Crosby and Savelio into this category (but they are probably a cut above).



I am not sure why they would necessarily keep it quiet ?, but it would certainly be nice to have one or two of the NZ squad after watching that game. They seem to be much more aggressive in the tackle than we are - both slowing down the ptb and then getting an extra couple of metres when they have the ball in hand.

Short memory? We had a problem scoring in the last hour of the Grand Final a few weeks ago.

I'd be more than happy to have Johnson and Nightingale

If our business has been concluded then I would give it a B-. Could be better but also could have been a lot worse.
PROPS. If we can get 20 games each out of Cooper and Crosby then that is miles better than we got out of Bailey, Dodds and Cox with bigger minutes and better quality.
BACK ROW. savelio being a straight replacement for Laithwaite then fine. Again more games and minutes hopefully. I am still a little concerned in this area though with Curries injury. If Westerman or Hughes gets a long term injury we will be light. We all know Harrison and Westwood can rotate at 13 but neither would be 80 minute players. Any further shuffling will leave the front row light.
HOOKER -we are heavily reliant on Clarke just as saints are with Roby and Hull FC are with Houghton. I don't think any team can afford a second Hooker with thequality of the primary Hooker so we have to go with it and hope Clarke stays fit same can be said for most teams (full respect to what Wigan achieved without mickey Mac)
HALFBACKS. A few question marks here. If the rumours blow over about Sandow then he plays left edge. Can Patton play on the right? Assume we can't expect to rely on Gidley all year with age / succession planning in mind. I don't think we could realistically have done an awful lot of strengthening in this area unless JT or Cooper Cronk fancied a nice couple of years in super league.
THREEQUARTERS - No change really. I would prefer to have Blythe's back up instead of Wheeler and we are a winger down in the release of Ormsby. There are only 2 positions that have nailed on names. FB - Ratchford and LC - Atkins the rest are all up for grabs. I could have a good go at naming the Leeds, Wigan, saints and Hull threequarter line (preferred starting line up) but am just not sure about ours. That is where I think the problem is. It is difficult to defend and attack out wide when. You are not confident what the man next to you is going to do. There is a lot of decision making and anticipating in those positions and we have changed our 1-5 a lot over the last 3 years. If players can keep form and attitude and we stick a plan then we could be fine.
In general I am happy with what we have.
I can't wait to get going again. It's a long off season in RL.

Heard him say this before only to then go out and sign someone.

We may have signed somebody, they can still submit the Squad to the RFL but don't have to announce it to the fans. We might have someone virtually signed but have things to sort in the playing contract, so we could submit the squad with a player in our plans and not 100% have them signed yet. I didn't realise there was a deadline for the squad, you learn something every day

I hope we have signed a centre or winger I really do.