Do we really want a player who is obviously waiting on this and would rather stay in Aus? If he does come it's because of uncertainty with the Titans and could cry homesick at anytime.

Personally if the players in Aus show no eagerness to come from the offer on the table I would walk away after the decision time frame expired.

I agree. We need to learn after Sandow and Hiku

Hiku helped secure our Super League status for next season - I wouldn't want to change that.
Sandow helped us to the LLS, 2 finals, and was worth the admission fee to watch - I wouldn't want to change that.

Signing any antipodean has its problems - the overwhelming majority of them will want to go home at some point, after 1 year or 5, be they old or young, family or none.

Even the younger players who come over for the opportunity, with the right "I want to be here" attitude, they'll ultimately want to head back home should they perform well for us, leading to offers arising for them back home.

Hiku gave us enough time to find a replacement - no problem with that.

I think there's no problem in signing these players as long as we accept there's a risk (especially with a basket case like Sandow), and therefore have a reasonable succession plan in place - something we didn't do with Sandow, leading to the panic buy of Brown (double annoying with letting Myler go).

Price may stay long term, he may win back to back GF's and leave for a top job back home. But that's fine, we have a succession plan in place with Henderson.

It should be no different with these Aussie players.

I would think the whole Half Back planning was thrown into disarray with Briers retirement.

No doubt at the time but that was 4 whole seasons ago (November 2013) and we have still not replaced him at the time of writing.

It meant that Sandow was brought in which meant that Brown was brought in. I think that covers "disarray".

Sandow was a panic buy due to a crap season because we couldn’t develop our promising junior half-back into a first team player. The coaches seem to have been unable to further develop our junior players where most top clubs manage to establish them into their respective first teams quite well. We ended up spending quite a bit of money on transfers fees replacing these juniors, and the bigger-name players who came in seem to have actually gone backwards under Smith and Agar!

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that we kept them 2 seasons too long, despite the relative success of 2016.

Just hope the new team does better with less quality as they’ll need all the home grown talent they can at the moment... Would love to see Patton and Livett do well under Price. Shame we lost Dagger but maybe we have a couple of decent backs still to come through?

Quote: Captain Hook "It meant that Sandow was brought in which meant that Brown was brought in. I think that covers "disarray".'" I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.

Quote: Captain Hook "It meant that Sandow was brought in which meant that Brown was brought in. I think that covers "disarray".'" I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.

The retirement of Lee Briers caused a fair bit of disruption but i think that is where the mistakes started.
A) It was not like Briers had his career cut shhort at the age of 29. The planning should have been in place anyway.
B) Myler almost immedietly moved to the right edge having spent the previous 3 years on the left edge building cominations with Atkins and others.
C) Sandow was brought in towards the back end of 2015 and he was a left edge player but we knew he was going to take a lot of managing which is fine as long as you can manage the situation
D) Gidley was brought in and given the No1 shirt iirc (previosly held by russell) and i think Ratchford was given the No6 shirt. I know you cant read an awful lot into squad numbers but surely that was an indication of Smiths plans but almost straight away that was effectively reversed when they took to the field.

In my view the recruitment and selection of all of the key pivot positions (1,6,7 & 9) has been a mess for the last 4 or 5 years when Smith knew that Hodgson, Briers, Monaghan were all coming to the end of their playing days at the same time.
I would be happy to go with Brown on the right edge for 2018 backed up by Livett and I hope the rumours about Roberts are true because he is mainly a left edge playmaker backed up by Patton. Roberts is also a goalkicker with a career average of nearly 74% (better than Cameron Smith) which could be a big bonus.
The word Marquee should be reserved for truly great players but the way things are we are not going to attract the big names but i think he may be just what we need.

We've not replaced briers in the same way saints haven't replaced long...because it's nigh on impossible to at the minute. These players don't exist on our shores anymore. They died out when briers retired. The best British halfbacks we have at the minute are Williams, Gale and ruddy Sneyd and long and briers were in a different league to all 3. Sandow was a decent attempt and we knew he was a huge risk. I actually agree with Duckie for once in that i think Brown is not as bad as this season has shown and could actually come good.

Also is quade cooper worth a punt? He always looked like a league player playing the wrong game to me.

Didn`t Brown play on the left edge for the Smellies?

That long cut out pass he has was always to the left wing, that I recall?

I could never fathom out why Smith played him on out right edge, when Gidley had played there when we had Sandow

Because Patton is on the left edge