he easily replaces philbin in my 17

We will have a chance for a close up on Sunday hopefully he'll be doing plenty of tacking rather than busting.

My inclination is to agree with FMC re him and Philbin. I see him as an upgrade despite an improvement in Philbin's form, but I'd temper that with a comparison of their terms and the use of a quota spot.

If he is our only signing for next year i think we might keep Drinkwater and hopefully Tai.
Forwards wise we already have Max Wood, Dan Okoro, Lucas Green in the wings, with Luke thomas added back next year, So with Yates added in we aren't looking bad.
yates Might rotate with Currie at 13 next year, keeps them both fresh and avoids burnout. We'd be swapping a high work rate player for a high work rate player, so we wouldn't have a dip in energy and impact once Currie is subbed.
Might not be the plan that at all but would be welcome

Anyone heard Ratchford to Salford?

if you're not not getting a 6'4 18 stone monster, you're getting a 5'10 squat person, then you want him to be better than your current 5'10 middle, he's a lot better in defence than philbin, he's been pretty highly rated since coming over here.

He's probably a much much better version of what we expected from jason clark in terms of doing a lot of mopping up.

I'm quite excited at the thought of him and Fitzgibbon defending together

Overall, I’ve thought of Yates as Hudds all-round best player the last few seasons. I also liked the look of McQueen for a while, but I feel Yates is more consistent even though he doesn’t grab the limelight as much.

I’d be very happy with this signing. It’s a 17 man game, so not too fussed at who starts in the 13.

Yep. I am not bothered really who he replaces. All I know is that Yates is very very likely to be in the 17 every week.

No, but he has been all we could’ve wanted, slotted in wherever he was asked and always made a decent fist of it, possibly at the expense of his personal ambitions. I would hope every Wire fan would wish him well. A possible punditry role when he retires I would think.

He has been a great signing and clubman over a long period of his career, since starting originally at Salford.

I always thought that he would be the ideal type of player to move into coaching once his playing days ended.

Maybe offer him a role at Academy/Scholarship level as an assistant and see how he does?

The best props I saw back in the day were around 5’7” to 5’10”.
I couldn’t believe how short Les Boyd and Kurt Sorenson were in off the pitch real life!

I’ll be extremely pleased to see our recruitment slow down to picking up just one or two players if those players are good and fit the system. We’ve had ample opportunity to look over at St Helens and see how they do it and finally the penny is dropping. Saints IIRC very rarely have a big turnover at the end of the season - they go for continuity and promote from within and bar the odd inevitable mistake they have got their recruitment spot on.

Hull are currently behaving like us of old…..except even worse which is horrifying if you’re a Hull fan.

dont forget Jim Mills he was a real short ar… actually he was quite big

From my perspective Mills seemed to be the exception back then rather than the rule. His great adversary and our guy Mike Nicholas fits RD's Prop prototype from back in the day.