Sorry, but O'Brien and McNamara are not in my opinion good enough as half back options to enable us to challenge for top 6 again.

We need to obtain a quality half and all the indications are that this is being taken care of. Derek has advised us fans to be both patient and to expect more 'signings' - plural not singular. The only signing that has happened since he said this has been Alec Tuitavake. Now my maths might not be brilliant but it is just about robust enough to work out that this means there is at least one more signing to come.

Add to the mix Derek's so called cryptic social media comments about another half back signing which to me made it fairly obvious that a half is indeed to be signed so, 'reading the runes', I think we can all look forward to at least one more signing announcement before the season starts and a half at that.

Yes, we want the half back to be right for us and to be half decent and at least better than the options that we have already got.

Oh, yes, and Marc Sneyd is today being pedalled to all SL interested parties together with the rest of the Salford first team. The rumour mill is that we are in for him. Purely a coincidence of course. Watch this space.

Is Sneyd a better quality SL half back than Gareth O'Brien? Come on, let's be realistic.

I for one would love to see Sneyd playing for us this season. If he does then the team's prospects have suddenly taken a considerable upturn.

Even if Sneyd goes elsewhere then I remain optimistic that another good quality half will be announced fairly soon.

No arguments from me that a truly quality half is a big upgrade on GO'b or McNamara and increases our potential, but I'm also not all that worried about us not signing someone before the season starts.

Is there only me worried about our forward options at the moment? As we all know we we were a much better team last year with Amone on the field, the games he missed we lacked real go forward as Mulhern couldn’t do it all himself, which pack is better? Halfbacks are secondary if you don’t win the middle.

2024
Mulhern
Ipape
Amone
Halton
ODonnell
Asiata

Sub Forwards (take you’re pick)
Trout
Hughes
Dwyer
Davis
Pene
Norman
Holmes
Baxter
Wilde

2025
Mulhern
Ipape
Trout
Halton
O’Neill
Liu

Sub forwards
Hughes
Tuitavake
Davis
Pene
Wilde
Dwyer
Martin
Brown

Agree. For the first 13/17, we've effectively replaced Tom Amone with either Tuitivake, who will likely need time to develop, or Nakubuwai who has shown he's not good enough for this level.

faster in the backs,weaker in the forwards only one good half back in the squad and no real goal kicker.seem we could be in for a difficult season.But`then Chester and Lam seem to have a knack of getting things right

Yes, that about sums it up for me too.

I could perhaps add that we have (yet) again a new season and a new team. How quickly will we gel. The season could well be over for Cup runs and top 6 finishes before we hopefully become cohesive and dangerous again.

Transition season only for me. I really, really hope that I am wrong.

as none of us have seen any of the new boys play full games how can we know
we do know it takes time to gel a top class half back would help as would some home games early is it only us has this handicap
we did say would go back for condon once hes fit
surely pene has more to offer trout will be fitter and claim his place the others are mainly young men hopefully we have picked the right characters and they will go on to make themselves known as amone and odonnell did

Agree that we need a quality halfback, and i really do hope we do get one sooner rather than later, I hope what we go with doesn't affect our execution play like it did last year at times like Lammy pointed out more than once. However, we don't have a quota spot atm for Condon or any quota spot, but if we can offload Ben Nak, we can look at bringing in a top quality half. After saying that, Lammy must feel we're in a better place this season with the squad that we have now than we had last year, especially due to the disruption we had with the S&C late on just before our warm weather training in Lanzarote. Looks like we will have to go with what we have for now, and i will go for that for now. Still half glass full though.

Absolutely right. None of us know but that's the beauty of having an opinion and I respect anyone here who holds a different opinion to my own.

At the end of the day we all support the same club and we sometimes watch the same things but come to different conclusions. Long may that continue.

Speculation as to what is going to happen is all part of the fun of being a fan.

I'm amazed we haven't got a quality goal-kicker as some of the tight results will be decided by goal-kicking. I assume Macintosh and Gaz will be the goal-kickers, unless 1 of the new lads is proficient in that task. However, it's been reported Macintosh has picked up an injury in training. I'm sure it will be sorted eventually. Lam and Chester know what they're doing.

Reports that Huddersfield are in talks with Jacob Miller for the 2025 season. Just goes to show the lack of quality half backs available at this moment in time - I'm happy we're not going down a similar route of taking the dregs on offer. O'Brien and McNamara are good enough options to start the season with hopefully something to add as we progress.