Absolutely.

Will add great experience this year and could contribute to winning a trophy.

Deacon can take a side around the park and will add valuable leadership.

I can't follow your logic.

e.g. What would prevent 24 people taking us up to £1.59m and Deacon being paid £0.01m?

Exactly. They don't say ok so each player MUST get £64k. Some might get £32k and some might get £96k.

Deacon could be on £1k and someone else £122k.

...and do we actually have a 25 'big earners' anyway? Surely the cap is far more complex than is being made out with these examples.

Fielden has three portions of that cake at least, the greedy get!

Of course he is worth one of the 25 'pieces of the pie'. So hypothetically Deacon could be player number 25, if it wasn't him it would be someone like Mellor or another from his ilk in the reserves which would mean he is just a name in the squad of 25 as opposed to a player who we can realistically use to benefit the team and to be honest improve it.

Using that analogy, I assume that Feka has slightly more cake?

Feka has the whole cake.

Which OOC Scrum half should we have signed then?

And to be honest I would trust the numbers coming out of Aus to be that accurate. He'll our top earner for sure, but he potentially could be our best player as well.

Unless there are skills from Deacon that most are unaware of, such as coaching qualifications or Mr.Deacon is a very articulate intellectual.

This is a poor move.

As a player, he was average in his prime and suffered some truly appalling injuries, that must have shocked his system.

I hope I am proved wrong, but I can't help feeling it's another 'on the cheap' and 'on the hoof' decision.

We need a rough and tough prop as of a few seasons ago, not another half back.

he was very good in his prime

And following your model, what do we do if either Tomkins or Leuleuia, or maybe both, suffer season-ending injuries in the first month?

Would that be something you'd be prepared to gamble on?

We currently have five prop forwards, seven if you count Davies and Mossop. At a push, you could put Riddell in there, which gives us eight.

Contastingly, we have TWO halfbacks, as most observors seem to think that Mellor is still too young.

Not only do we need cover in the halves, I'd call it criminal negligence if we ignored such a need.