Just saw McDonnell 's robust score against Les Cats. He has had good reviews on loan. Could he be a contender for next season or are we overstocked with back rows?

Farrell, Bateman, Pearce-Paul, Isa, Smithies, Nicholson.

However there will be a reserve league next season so at least he will get plenty of games.

It’s a question for a fans forum in a few years if they start to leave. It links in with their point about paying these lads ‘the going rate’ to keep them as they become fully fledged first grade players. That’s great as long as you’re then getting the output from your hard work. If we’re developing players to head to the NRL and prop up many superleague clubs (including a big one up the road), then you have to wonder what the point is. If we talk here and now, we could get older forwards from elsewhere to do a comparable job to some of the young guys like Partington, Byrne, Smithies, Havard etc right now but the ambition has to be that these lads develop and go well last the levels of the more experienced guys we could sign. If we then feel the benefit it’s absolutely fantastic.

How far off do you think Nicholson is Rogues?

I’ve seen games of his here and there and he looks like he’d take to first team rugby quite comfortably. It’s unbelievable how stacked we are in the back row with all these lads coming through. Hopefully there’s an outside back or two who can push through in the next couple of years.

Wrong, in any business the buck stops with the employer and not the employee.

Its his job to provide the best manager to run the business or in the case of the playing side of a rugby league club, the head coach and coaching/training/medical staff.

We need to alter the talent id programme for that to happen. We've only really been interested in aggressively pursuing back row and 'middles' it seems for the last five or so years.

Not if the employee isn't doing his job properly. In which case it's the employer's responsibility to replace him. And IL is in the process of that.

In 2010, IL replaced Brian Noble with Michael McGuire but kept the same team. The results were staggeringly different, which disproves your assertion.

You fail to allow for the fact that in any other business, if an employee is failing to deliver, they can be either sacked or managed out of the business and replaced (depending on the severity) on a 1-to-1 basis.

In rugby (and football), you can't just sack them as you need to pay up their ENTIRE contract and pay for a replacement as well, meaning that you pay double for 1 job.

We didn't sack Nobby to bring in Madge - We waited for his contract to expire and brought Madge in for the start of the following season.

Therefore, your assertion is equally disproved/flawed, although I agree with your main point that Lam is the issue here - Not Lenagan.

I'm not sure how this puts us in any kind of disagreement.

But for the record I never said that IL sacked Nobby. Just that he replaced him.

Lam may be the problem, but the fact remains that Lenagan has not sacked him either because he is happy with him as the Coach or as you say, if he sacked him, he would have to pay out his full contract plus have the additional cost of a new part season cost of a new contract for his replacement.

In my opinion, seeing that Lenagan is a business man, he has taken the cheapest option of not sacking Lam which is hardly surprising with the present financial state of the club.

The rumour that that a hardly known inexperienced "Coach" in Matty Peet is to be the replacement for Lam is hardly going to give supporters the confidence that things are going to improve on the coaching level of the club.

If Pete does take over, it worries me that Lam didn't get sacked at some point this season and Peet took over.

Why would that be?

1 - IL thinks Lam better man for the job (worries me for next year)
2 - Pete not ready (worries me for next year)

I haven't mentioned financials as the above scenario wouldn't bring any additional costs... Only paying Lam off for his remaining months which IL may refuse to do out of principal?

Other possibilities:

3 - They haven't firmly decided yet (they said they were still going through the process at the fans' forum which wasn't long ago.
4 - They might not want to chuck Peet straight into the deep end having him coach his first SL games at the business end of the season.
5 - They might not want to disrupt the squad late in the season by swapping coaches, especially if Peet wants to make major changes.

I would have pressed the button straight after the Saints game but I can understand reasons why they chose not to.