it's largely believed in hull that matt cook and liam colbon are coming your way next year, both out of contract

no it isn't!

You cannot market crap and get away with for ever. At the end of the day the team needs to be able to compete.

Matt Cook was with us before and got all home sick!! Has he got over his cold feet now??

Yes it is.

Perhaps Cook as a squad player, although we have a lot of those already. Colbon is crap, that would be a real sign of intent!

Chicken and egg. We need better players so that the crowds brought along by the new marketing plan keep coming. There is no point in getting a full house and then getting flogged, but equally there is no point in getting a world beating side playing in an empty stadium. My dears you are both right.

Hear ye, think it is Matt James you are referring to not Cook. (Brian Mac said James was the only player he had known who didn't love playing down here).

Aye, Matt Cook is from Bedford so wouldn't have thought moving down here would be a problem.

Oh...my bad.

Only Bailey is definitely quota. Not sure whether Dracula Howell got in before the new regulations but the others are all off quota, they have been here years and before the regs were tightened

It's not chicken and egg at all. People have better things to do in London than watch a sub standard team. We will never get decent crowds with a sub standard team. However, we would have a reasonable chance of getting decent crowds with a world beating team.

A thread called 'building for next season'? After what's happened to Andy Ellis and Olly Wilkes seeing the words 'building' and 'next season' are the funniest things I've seen in ages!!

yes he has relatives in the area and is looking to share a house with colbon somewhere around hemel hempstead I hear. It's as good as a done deal. Cook has been pretty good for us this year when he's played, our coach doesn't really rate him despite numerous good performances and has messed him about , he's been excellent on attack but misses the occassional tackle, Colbon on the other hand has been injury plagued for the last year and a half and is nowhere near the player we signed from Wigan in his first year when he was a pretty solid superleague winger.

Let's keep things in perspective - we haven't even finished this season yet. The club made positive noises a few weeks back about spending/speculating more to get a stronger squad. It's going to be who we have in February that matters, not who we have now, or after the final game of this season. I trust our club is simply playing its cards close to its chest. Alright, I still wait to be totally convinced, but I'm not going to write off next season yet.

If we can't get comparable (or better) replacements for Gale, Wilkes & Ellis we might as well withdraw our licence application like Crusaders did and let Halifax have a go.