The reason being I would guess is that Hughes was generally accepted as a good all-round signing by most, the other signings in one way or another causing a tiny bit of a stir.

I've got to agree a very good signing who has a lot of ability.

I see there's still a lot of talk about replacing Smith.

Who would we get in?

Are there top coaches around or is it likely to be a very underwhelming name?

My guess is, if we start next season badly, we will part company with Smith and put Agar in charge. We will then mark time for a year, like we did under Lowes, until we get rid of Agar at some point in 2017 by which time we will probably have lost ground and become a mid table mediocre team.

Who will come then? Will we be pitching at the top end for top Aussie coaches or will we be looking at someone like Iestyn Harris, or getting Lowes back etc?

The more I think about next year, the more it makes sense.

Hughes is a good signing, no one really questions it. Good athlete and could develop into a cornerstone of our pack.
Dodds while a risk with injury is a top player. Let's not forget, he was keeping Garbutt out of the Brisbane team, who has recently developed a handy silver collection.
Gidley is as fit as a fiddle, model pro, mouthpiece, leader, big game experienced player, who we were crying out for last year.
Sandow is a jack in the box, but can kick. The first 15 minutes of his debut was the best we have seen of him. Kicked well, found the ground and took the line on. If we can get him on plan, keep him on plan, he is a handful. Kicking the ball effectively is the difference between teams in tricky games, we saw that in the 3rd test with Smith, did nothing but kick, and got England position to go on and win the match.
Lineham is pace and power. No reason why he can't continue to score tries.
Westerman is a bit of a diamond in the rough. The 'potential' tag is now played out and it's backs against the wall time. He needs a big season. He will always make a lot of tackles, which is what Harrison brought, like Harrison he's not a massive meter eater, but he has better hands. Has all the components (including a goal kicking option) to be a good player. Ferres had similar reviews at Bradford and Wakey, it was only recently that things ticked for him and he became a leading back rower.
Cox is a big unit, still young in prop years. Minutes for props will be hard to come by if plan A works, with Sims Hill Westerman Dodds and Westwood in the middle. Why not add a cheap option low risk number to the squad.
Bailey is the strange one. Again, big strong and cheap. He has a bit of big game experience to boot. Never going to break tackle or meters records, but it is a sizeable body to plug gaps in case of injuries. Similar to the Isa signing for Wigan, probably won't play but he's a body who knows what he's doing.

Chuck those into what we already had, plus the Kings, Philbin, Wilde, Laithwaite, Johnson etc a year older and wiser we have a decent squad.

Lineham good at scoring tries although his injuries have taken a bit of his pace off. Still a powerhouse although his defence is e.westy will tackle all day and he's a big unit for a loose forward won't let u down.

Well, if we are going to change the car I don't think we should buy a British one. And we certainly can not afford a new model from Oz, which means a second hand one from someone like Sheila's Sydney Bangers.com. Alternatively we could ditch the car and use the wife's runaround for a few months in the hope we can pick up a bargain somewhere else. Our current set of wheels appears to have a couple of flat tyres, no water in the radiator, no navigational system, and the MOT is due at the end of the year - time for some forward planning methinks.

So please tell us all who you would have bought in the current climate. We would all love to know

Regarding Tony Smith it is certainly a big year for him at the Wire next season and if things don't work out too well it could trigger a merry go round on the coaching front
An ex Hull FC player told me that Radford is in the same boat too and that if things don't improve there then they have earmarked Tony Smith to take over

If Tony Smith does leave then i would imagine that Daryl Powell will be the next Wire coach although it will cost you to get him out of his Tigers contract

Powell certainly seems to have done pretty well and gets the most from his squad(s). Would we be better getting an Aussie in though ? Wait until we see who is released from down under ? The Oz game looks to be very structured. They 'play the odds' and 'hunt the error' which is an anathema to us. I must admit I don't fancy watching robots, I like free flowing rugby and seeing players chance their arm from time to time. But I also wan't to see our coaches going through set moves with the players on the training ground, and if the stats show charge-downs as being unproductive, I would hope the coach eliminates them. And most of all I would like to see forward planning with the squad such that we replace ageing players progressively rather than having to bring in 9 new players at the end of the season.

I think the close season recruitment was as good as could be achieved. Even if you have money though, you may not attract the best players because they wan't success as well, and we have fallen out of the top 4 atm. The players that we have brought in though look much stronger to me than last year, so unlike quite a few people on here I am expecting a top four finish and the sniff of a final. But yes, as we approach the end of next season the choice of coach for 2017 will be crucial. As Tony Smith once said, every coach has his shelf life.

I think the point being made is that with careful succession planning you don't need to have to buy 8 news players in one off season and be subject to what's available. Instead project where the replacements are going to be needed on a 2 to 3 year time frame and plan your recruitment around that with 2/3 changes per season.

Bailey is a good example. Leeds no longer deem him good enough for them and get shut. We snap him up after failing to get our real targets. Result is we are buying players that are not good enough for those teams we aspire to compete with. How is that going to work - already we are at a disadvantage.

What the club have been guilty of is hanging onto some of the older players too long in the hope of winning more silverware but the idea didn't work out. As for lack of succession planning ,that was taken care of by the dismantling of the Academy system & left us & a number of other clubs with under 19s & flawed dual registration to work with. As a result promising under 23s had to move on because they couldn't stay with their parent clubs.

Yet, we have players those teams we aspire to compete with want. Swings and roundabouts.

Hill, Clark and possibly Currie... so not many.

I think you miss my point. Having players (maybe we have 3) that other sides covet is very different than signing players deemed no longer good enough for their club.

Not his biggest fan but ratchford is highly coveted, I think lineham would also be wanted by some big clubs along with sandow, gidley and Dodds. Leeds were sniffing around westerman and potentially Hughes would be wanted by some as well. Add those to Clark hill and currie and it doesn't look too shabby.

I agree with this but also think we did more of this forward planning than people give credit for, what did for us was some of the players we forward planned for didn't turn out as we would have expected.

The common criticism is that we didn't plan for Briers' retirement. As Briers entered his 30s the next young star British halfback was supposed to be Richie Myler, so we signed him. But then the feeling was perhaps there was a better one at Salford and we'd signed the wrong one because Ratchford was better. So we signed him as well. Plus there was a lot of excitement about Gareth O'Brien coming through. As it turned out Myler and O'Brien weren't right and Ratchford whilst a good player is maybe not a like for like replacement. But the idea was correct.

In other positions I think we faced a trade off, because we had a very good team but a lot of players were of a similar age. We could have started dismantling the team early or we could have let it go through to its full potential and see what it could achieve. We chose the latter which meant we had a harder job down the line but I still think that was a fair choice. The team probably peaked in 2011 but we still had a Challenge Cup win and two Grand Final appearances after that - if a bit of luck had gone differently on those days at OT we could have had two Grand Final wins, the team was good enough, and it would have been a shame to break it up early and lose that chance.

Maybe the lesson going forward is that when you build a team in the first place, watch that the age of the players isn't all around the same. I liked our recruitment from 2006 to 2011 but with hindsight we did sign too many players in their late 20s or early 30s.

But still I don't want to complain too much as having seen Warrington for two decades before, that team from 2009 to 2013 was a privilege to watch and I expect as I get older and nostalgia kicks in that will be one of the all time great teams.