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.

Yes, we discussed this ? 2 years ago. It always seemed a strange situation to me to be running with such an ageing team, particularly as we know Moran is a stickler for professionalism and forward planning. There could have been several reasons why we never brought in [idirect [/ireplacements; the expectation that our youth system and Myler type purchases would come through, pressure on Smith to deliver and hence run with his old stars until they really were totally spent, pressure from Moran for the club to be self-financing (hence the youth system to provide the next generation). But for whatever reason, we did not replace like for like and so here we are with what feels like a panic reaction and heavy purchase of players in the pre-season. But the coach carries the can for what happens on the field - perhaps with the exception of Leeds where uncle Gary runs everything. And I can remember asking whether Smith could do an 'Alex Fergusson' and rebuild a team from the ashes of the old. We now know the answer to that one, the new question is whether he can meld together the new players and motivate the squad to get Wire back into the top four before he departs at the end of the season. With his legacy and personal pride at stake I suspect we will have a pretty good season.

Of course we are all wise after the event.

Back in 2010,2011 I don't remember there being much call to move some of the older players on early. We could have started moving out say Morley, Carvell, Briers, Michael Monaghan at that point even when they had a couple of good years in them, and started freshening up the team but I bet if we had done that there would have been a lot of players criticising Smith if those players had gone on to have good years at other clubs.

It was like Cullen releasing Sid Domic and him going on to have two great years with Wakefield and one with Hull, during which time he was actually more successful than Warrington were!

Wasn't that to do with the overseas quotas? I seem to recall it was a choice between him and Appo and at the time Appo had just been named in the dream team.

But we did release Sid Domic to sign John Wilshere & Chris Leikvoll from St George Illawarra.

Both were off quota. Leikvoll had a UK passport (check out his profile) and Wilshere was KOLPAK

What were your thoughts when we signed Brett Hodgson?

Sorry "failing to get our real targets"? who were our real targets and why did we not get them?

Real targets
Ukuma Ta'ai
Jake Lillyman

As reported
Jordan Cox
Ryan Bailey

As announced by the club

I have no idea why we did not achieve the signings of the higher calibre players.

Wasn't Hodgson only offered a 1 year deal by Hudds? So he wasn't deemed "not good enough" for the subsequent season.

Yes, it was a choice of two out of Burns, Domic and Appo and we made the wrong one in hindsight.

I guess the thinking was that Burns and Domic were similar players, and we had signed Forshaw and had high hopes for Paul Noone at the time, so Appo gave us something different with his pace.

Actually even if it came down to a choice of Burns or Domic I'd have chosen Domic, just about.

This argument about a player being deemed "not good enough" by their previous club is more about the judgement of that club.

I wonder what the St George Illawarra fans think of Mike Cooper.

Warrington agreed to release him so he could sign for the Dragons. If he was not deemed good enough for Warrington, how on earth could anyone think he was good enough to play in the NRL?