Foe me this is a good signing, i think that Deacon is a better all round scrum half than Tommy, last year there where many times when we lacked an experienced half back to settle the ship. Deacon will give us this and also a much needed kicking game and hopefully will also help Tommy develop as a scrum half, that is if MM sees Tommy as a scrum half and not a hooker.

Adam Blair certainly fits the bill for them in that department.

In my eyes and Enforcer is not always going to slap people about and give away the silly penalties it is someone who commands respect, gets on with the dirty work and is not afraid to mix it if needed. Hard but generally fair, although prone to walking the line without stepping over it.

Pongia did that for us and despite having a fearsome reputation from his younger days never got involved in a fight on the field once to my memory in fact more often than not he separated them, but he never needed to mix it himself as nobody mixed it with him.

are you jokin mate?

deacons best years are behind him, and im betting the bradford fans arnt sorry to see him go.
he didnt do much leading from the front and "steadying the ship" last year.

tommy is a way better 7 than the deacon of today.

But Deacon is there as back up.

If Tommy gets injured do you suggest we throw Sam & Joe Mellor in at half back?

I quite like Coley tbh. I think he's always done a solid enough job for us but his role has been let down abit by the 2 big money lads in Feka and Fielden not living up to their reputations.

I just get the feeling at his age the club may look to move on and get a younger version of him in. A player like Mcarthy-Scarsbrook is a real workhorse and alot younger then Coley and could possibly be available on similar terms.

I'm looking to 2011 yet again

Nothing but that isn't the point I was making.

If we was on £10K he would most likely be one of our 2nd tier players so that £10K would come out of the 2nd tier cap budget which is only £50K. That would reduce the clubs ability to give débuts to young players because they would only have £40K left.

If he was one of our 1st tier players he takes up one of the 25 slots so we can't sign a 26th player even if we didn't spend to the full cap.

So the bottom line is if he is on £10K it impacts what 2nd tier players can get a game next season and if he is a 1st tier player (whatever his 1st tier wage is) he takes one of the 25 slots.

In theory if he was on a low 1st tier wage he could drop out of the top 25 earners if we signed another senior player but his wage would then come out of the 2nd tier budget. So if he were on say £30K he would take up 3/5 th of it in one go of that happened.

So signing a player [ueven on a low wage[/u always has an impact on what else you can do with the squad.

Dave

Yes it has an impact, but if you look at the squad we only have 24 players without deacon before we even get onto Liam Farrell, Josh Vievers, Ian Thornley, Chris Tuson and Ben Davies (Lee Mossop, Sam Tomkins and Sean Ainscough are included in that 24) And as far as i'm aware at least a couple of those are going out on loan potentially.

So I don't really see it's going to prevent us doing anything, and I'm sure if it was felt it was, IL and co would not have made the signing.

Which is what Fielden and Feka at least should be capable of doing with the right coaching and motivation isn't it.

Disagree, its more a personality trait that neither have, have never seen that nasty side in either of them even at the top of there game, nothing against them they make up for it in other ways, but we have seen in the past that nasty intimidating side is not something you can force on a player it has to be a natural thing, Ian Lucas under Monie for example.

This is the squad Deacon played with when he earned his reputation:
1 Robbie Paul
2 Tevita Vaikona
3 Leon Pryce
4 Shontayne Hape
5 Lesley Vainikolo
6 Michael Withers
7 Paul Deacon
8 Joe Vagana
9 James Lowes
10 Paul Anderson
11 Daniel Gartner
12 Jamie Peacock
13 Mike Forshaw
14 Lee Gilmour
17 Stuart Reardon
18 Lee Radford
19 Jamie Langley
20 Scott Naylor
22 Karl Pryce
26 Chris Bridge
27 Rob Parker
29 Stuart Fielden
30 Richard Moore

Make up your own minds.

Looking at that I'd say it's better than both the current Leeds team and the St Helens side of a couples of years ago.

Only my opinion of course.