Possibly the most important position on the field is hooker and that's where we need to strengthen,imo.Hood has been a good servant but
we require better in SL next season.Doyle is looking like he's got what it takes but next year is possibly too soon.Same with Smith,but further away.Not sure if he's available and we could fit him in,but as I've mentioned before,Parcell would take us to another level.Forget age,he looks as good as ever and doing nearly a full game for KR most matches.

I think you are misreading optimism for hubris... but i get it... optimism is a rare commodity amongst Trinity fans

Let's not exaggerate, he had 3/4 good games but still wasn't as good as a 34 year old who'd retired the season before.

He looks leaner and is playing well this year, but we need to remember the quality of the opposition. He's a lot to prove in my opinion.

He does, but then he's not guaranteed a starting spot either.
Uele, Rodwell, McMeekan, and then Atoni and Vagana fighting it out for the last spot.

I'd say he's well ahead of Vagana at the moment. Vagana was unlucky with his injury so I think it'll be next season before we see the best of him. Showed some good signs today though.

So in your opinion who are average out of our new signings then? and who was past it back in 2023 that we're taking back up to SL?

Also, I'd put good money on us beating London, Hull and Huddersfield right now, the last two especially are dire. Who are all these players that are gonna make Huddersfield and Hull a lot stronger next year? Hull seems to have got together an over 33 side, yeah there are a couple of decent signings there but that's about it, Hudderfield has signed one of the Burgess Twins, who plays about 20 minutes a game nowadays. If he was much cop his brother would have snapped him up to play for Wire. Marsters and Yates Hudds best 2 players this year, one gone and the other is going. They signed a number of overseas at the start of the year on 3 and 2-year contracts, like Clune, Deakin and Murchie and so it's going to be hard for them to make room on the cap to sort that team out imo.

Whoever has said SL is going to be a cakewalk next season? I've never heard it once, so why make things up? The most I've heard fans hope for is if we made the top 6, but many also would be happy with a competitive top 8, that also would be a good starting point.

Can't beat one of our own fans bigging up rival clubs and cvonstantly crapping all over our team and new signings, why bother watching?

Heard at the game on Friday night that Hull KR are now looking at hanging on to him

Their overseas quota’s full so not sure how they’d manage that. For what it’s worth I think Doyle is ready for SL, but agree we could do with someone to spell and back up for Doyle if he gets a knock. I really rate Smith but for next year at least he’s a 30 mins per game off the bench type of hooker, like most good hookers when they first come through.

I wouldn’t be disappointed if we kept hold of Hood for another year and get an answer to the question of whether he can keep up in SL. His defence is still top drawer, he’s just not very dynamic on the ball. Parcell would be a slight improvement - but good enough for a quota spot?

Agree completely. With our 1-19 available we’d beat London, Hull, Huddersfield and Cas now. Or looked at another way, if any of those teams were in the Championship this year they would have lost more than one game. Throw in McMeeken, Johnstone, Hall, Trueman et al and I think we’re mixing it with Leeds, Leigh, Catalans on a bad day, and picking off a few top teams here and there. For me there’s not much pressure, I’m just looking forward to seeing Rodwell run over James Bentley.

Personally not convinced we’d beat anyone other than hull , when we’ve faced teams that are fit we’ve struggled to break them down , even hull have a squad of full timers. If you take cas and Huddersfield 1-17 suspect we’d struggle.

At the moment we really don’t know how good some of our 2024 signings are, certainly we are going to need the likes of Russel Truman Johnson to stay fit

Have you watched Hudds, Catalans, Hull these past few weeks? They are incredibly poor and you really think we wouldn’t beat them. They’re not even turning up.

The whole point of breaking teams down is why we have signed two half backs for next season in Russell and Truman.

We have won every game bar 1 and haven’t struggled in hardly any games this season. Perhaps 2/3 where it’s been close but we’ve faced plenty of fit teams this season where we have won healthily. The strengthening for 2025 should see us be competitive around the middle somewhere I hope.

Injuries are same for all teams. You could say the same for every other team. But our conditioning team are excellent and the fitness of the players is very good so you can’t influence much more than that.