No idea what wage those players would be on, but Saints recruitment of Paasi looks spot on watching the Saints CC match.
Our recruitment has been average at best over the last 10 years at least and because we haven't had the youth in numbers coming through it's a double whammy.
Typically you'll generally have to pay more to bring players in at whatever level, but too often they've not lived up to expectations.

You could probably compare us to the Leeds team that Daryl Powell inherited from Dean Lance in 2001. There were a lot of players who were internationals. Brett Mullins, Tonie Carroll, Iestyn Harris, Ryan Sheridan, Robbie Mears, Jamie Mathiou, Darren Fleary, Andy Hay, Brad Clyde, Anthony Farrell. You could have made an argument then that the issue wasn't the quality of the roster, they just needed the right coach.

But also you could have pointed at a lot of those players and asked were they on the way up or were they plateauing/coasting or in steady decline, like you can with us now.

Those players were all moved on in 2 years under Powell. Probably involved some hard conversations, as Powell had only just retired as a player and he would have fit that category of established players who were treading water, the year before. Some of those would have been his mates. Powell brought in Mark Calderwood, Richie Mathers, Rob Burrow, Danny McGuire, Ryan Bailey, Danny Ward, JJB, Matt Diskin. He also brought in some older players around them who had a good attitude: Gary Connolly, Andrew Dunemann, Willie Poching, Chris McKenna, Matt Adamson, David Furner, Adrian Vowles. It was a total squad overhaul. Those older players coming in, weren't the coasting/declining players that had been moved on, they were a considerable upgrade in attitude and hunger. Some of the guys in the Leeds team he inherited, had been successful a few years earlier in the Graham Murray era, but the game was moving on and Powell recognised that the squad needed a reset.

The squad that Powell handed over to Tony Smith after his 2 and a half years was faster, hungrier and played better rugby than the one he inherited. Now you could say, they didn't win anything when Powell was there - which is a fair point. But also not a bad job given that Powell had just retired as a player and was learning on the job at a big club. The squad culture was changed from one of big names who were underdelivering to one that was ready to win. If Powell does that with us he's done his job. I wouldn't be surprised if over the next few years Powell does a lot of surgery on the squad which will mean some peoples favourites are moved on, but there aren't many in our squad who I think would be a massive loss, other than Clark.

Had to laugh at his interview with Tanya for his MOM award...

Tanya: “You must have dreamed about playing in the challenge cup from half way across the world?”

Paasi: “Errrr... I’d heard of it”.

Agree with this and your stance on player comparisons. Even if saints and Wigan have better squads our team is under performing and has for a while. That's ultimately the coaches job.

I don't think it's necessarily a mentality thing us vs leeds/ wigan/Leeds for the superleague trophy, I think their academy backup means that they don't
patch up lads who are injured to get them on the field so much as we do, they have far more depth in their cover because their academies are better than ours and produce more and better players, they also have a playing identity which means they can adapt straight away in to the first team playing style. I honestly think that the ability to rotate more when needed means their players hit the end of the season fresher than ours. We have only got. 3 academy lads who I believe come in to the first team and not look out of place and they are Thewlis, Dean and Longstaff. I'm sure a few others would surprise me in all fairness as i'm only judging from what I saw last season when they stepped up and none of them had been pkaying competitive rugby. Point is though that the likely front runners have more.

will be interesting to see how the relation ship between Powell and Fittzpatrick developes. Cannot see Powewll being at ease with KFPs showboating and publicity shots

I certainly hope not, I don't mind those sort of antics but get the product right on the pitch first.

All I care about is how Powell feels with the performance of the team. Because it seems Steve Price isn’t able to interpret what he’s seeing each week.

I said this at one of the fans forums, got told by that Clare we are trying to move away from that, so I asked do you want me sitting there clapping for our team when they getting beat 80-0, for these guys now fan entertainment seems more important than results. Fans are fickle, won’t go unless it’s a winning team, need to get that right first.

League Express saying apart from our interest in Trueman we are also after Peter Mata’utia whose contract runs out at the end of the season. Henderson looks favourite for the Cas job and looking like Sheridan is coming with Powell and other coaches at the Wire have been given no assurances that they will still be here.

Not keen on Mata'utia. I'd be throwing money at Watts if we were to sign anyone from Cas after Trueman.

Can’t you just buy the whole of Castleford, it would stop all this backwards and forwards malarkey.

O’Neill would be next behind Trueman for me. Really talented youngster and I think he might be off contract too.

That wouldn't stop castleford being backwards (also see widnes)

We going to and rename the team to Castleford Wolves.