It will be interesting to see how Mr Johnson & the rest of the young players progress under the Price/Henderson/Briers regime. Under Messrs Smith & Agar we brought in several youngsters from other clubs who never got a look in & were seemingly moved on under cover of darkness.

If Lee Briers thinks that this fellow is worth signing it is good enough for me.

Its not as if we are short of £££. I don't see the issue.

Assuming he's not in the top 25 paid players by the time we finish business, his salary won't count on the cap as he is under 21.

As of this offseason the club were wanting to have a second marquee signing, Clark is not that. We seem to have announced players as marquee when we have signed them - we never did that with Clark?

Well the club don't have to make a public statement about who or who isn't a marquee...
But word to me is Clarke is now put on as a marquee.
Clarke was our biggest earner in 2017 season since he got a top up following Sandow going awol.

Im expecting big things from Clark this season with the introduction of some proper go-forward in the form of BMM and Akaluola (no idea how to spell that!)

I hope we haven't had our trousers pulled down by Darryl Clarke,

we paid Castleford £185k for him,then paid him very well by all accounts, if the above is true he will now be earning in excess of £175k per year and isn't even an International player. ( though the same can be said of our other Marquee player).

Clarke [iwas[/i top quality and has enough attributes to be a consistent top performer (despite having no kicking game) but he's not progressed at all since coming to us.

If he continues like this he will be one of the most disappointing signings we've made,

he shows glimpses of class in a game but doesn't do it game after game which is surely what Marquee players should be doing.

He didn't get a look in for the world cup (rightly so) and was streets behind 49 year old James Roby.

clearly hookers are thin on the ground as we cant replace Brad Dwyer so making sure we keep one of the few decent hookers around is good business, but is Clarke just riding the Wires Gravy train in a comfy chair....??

Some noises from the club that the party animal that is Joe Westerman was a bad influence on the Yorkshire set. He'll have to practice these arts in Canada now so local Tykes should be safe.

Clarke came when he was 22(?). His 3 seasons here '15, '16 & '17 look to have not been great in terms of general squad-in-transition/behind the scenes goings on/dressing room harmony etc.

Coming into that environment as young lad with raw talent, I imagine it was tough going. Unlike players like Sims/Gids who can come into that situation and be left to their own devices to do what they do, players like Clark need a bit of mentoring.

I fully expect him to start dominating games for us in the coming seasons.

As to how he's ended up earning what he's earning - he must still be riding the 2014 wave when he was MOS and standout 4N player when negotiating, as his stock has certainly not risen since then, if anything it's decreased.

But players should earn whatever they can, and as long as it's not to the detriment of the team, good on them.

The most concerning thing about this should it be true, is that it would mean Clark is paid £100k per year more than Ben Currie.

remember, its rubber duckie who's saying this. don't get upset over it.

It doesn't look as bad if you consider it against games played.

If you look at Roby then for most of the time he makes breaks when the opposition defence are in disarray, or at least are not properly set. He got those opportunities in the WC because we had a pack that provided plenty of go forward and who were capable of winning the ruck. Contrast that to our forwards last season and most of the time they were flat on their backs in the tackle, allowing the defence to brew a cup of tea before jogging over to their positions. Go forward was very poor (hence the need for Russell). So Clark looked very much like just another forward for most of the game. I am hoping we are going to see a very different set of tactics under Price and hence opportunities to exploit what Clark does best by making those lightening fast breaks from the ruck.

On a slightly different topic, why did Chris Hill improve over the course of the WC ? By the final he was looking much more like the player we know from previous seasons. It could be that he wasn't having to carry the pack (provide most of the go-forward). But he also seemed to get 20 minute stints on the field whereas under TS he had to do a lot longer than that in most games. Was he simply flogged to death last year ?

This is also true.

Hill didn’t get a decent pre-season last year I think (some operation wasn’t it?) so maybe he just didn’t get chance to catch up as all the workload for the yards fell to him. He also had the burden of being Captain in a poorly performing team and mentally he probably lost a little bit of that lift. He seemed to get easily rattled and spent more time arguing with opposition players and the referee. I wonder if there’s any other member of the team who’s got some decent leadership in them? Then Hill could get on with what he does best. Goodwin has plenty of games unde his belt but I’m not sure whether he’s ever led a team...