"Our focus as well as the pre-season training programme now includes further recruitment which at this time of the year is far from ideal, however these are the cards we have been dealt and we move on from the past and look forward with excitement and confidence to the start of the Super League season.”

This load of tosh sounds to me like that will be his excuse when all the fans kick off when we announce Ryan Bailey in a Giants shirt. I will be FUMING if this is the case.

We currently have 1 EXPERIENCED prop in our team and loads of youngsters. When we have 2 quota spots available and we are losing experienced British players such as Huby and Eorl. Unless we sign a Burgess or a Graham I don't see how they can be replaced so easily as most squads from UK have been complete - which makes me think the Bailey rumours could be true.

I think people need to wake up and realise how badly the club is run. We must have ridiculous amounts of cap space available at the moment.

We have lost:
Huby, Crabtree, Johnson, Grix, Connor, Wood & Ellis and still potentially Wardle and replaced with Clough, Gaskell & Ferguson and we were extremely short of players last season.

Although most of the players which have left I agree with we are still massively short of around 3/4 maybe 5 decent players now if we are going to compete in the top 8 and push for top 4 again I just can't see it happening or where these players are going to come from.

The only other British prop I can think of available is Ben Harrison but I would much rather have Huby any day.

No, it's his brother who has left I'm looking forward to a quality young talent coming in for a centre who is unhappy at the club and has made no secret of his desire to leave for the NRL.

But you pose a good question regarding how this signing strengthens the squad. Surely the best one to answer this will be Rick Stone himself - perhaps you could drop him a line? If you do, would you be so kind as to relay his answer to us?

I'm with you on that one.
Nathan Brown and Paul Anderson were both guilty of it.

Jon Sharp, who's hand was pretty much forced on bringing in Cudjoe and Lawrence, due to our depth of squad really paid off. Give players enough experience and they can grow to be international class with a heart of claret and gold.

its ok bringing in the youngsters , but they cant all come in at the same time like last season due to injuries and having a small squad it didnt work and having to play too many games and losing is no good for the confidence

we need better luck with injuries next season, same for every club if the injuries hit they will struggle.. more so if you have a small squad like us

Yep. I'm hoping the likes of Wood and Macintosh can have a few back to back games during the season without it being because there is nobody else.

It would obviously be easier if we were getting some good results and not fighting to avoid the bottom 4!

they may get their chance in the two warm up games, their chance to impress!