Paul Aiton put his name to paper today. we have signed him. can't see sam coming now. i myself would have prefered obsty but not in richards plans , i am told. imo sam offered us more options and has proved his worth at wakefield. also heard young davey maybe? on the move. he has asked to be allowed to prove himself. don't know if he will get the chance. personally i hope he does get the chance. spoke to ewan dowes, still hasn't heard anything. time is getting tight now to find any decent front rowers and i hear we are getting close to our limits on spending. so if we want anymore we will have to free some space up. we will see.

I assume you mean Paul Aiton from Cronulla?
Don't really know much about him, but if we have signed him, lets get behind him

Seen Ewan Dowes a few times in Wakefield now, hopefully he'll be close to signing!

Also, i'd like to hear some news on Tongia, rather sharpish!!

As i stated previously regarding James, he is not part of Agar's plans, and if this signing is confirmed then you would think that the same applies to matty wildie also, who will also be further down the pecking order. Obviously there will be injuries and then if they get a chance its up to them to take it, but I dont hold out much hope of seeing many players under 25 featuring much next season.

on what assumption do you make that statement

wave bye bye to John, Johnson, Mariano, Morton, Davey, Wildie, Amor then

think you can add a few more to that list

unfortunately i reckon that at least 3 of those names will not feature much next season, unless there are a fair amount of injuries

Most of the juniors ARE NOT READY to play SUPERLEAGUE!

What do you want, we could put out a team full of the cheap signings we made last season and home grown juniors that are neither physicaly or mentally ready and in some cases they are not up to speed tactically. We'll get mullered almost every week and the young lads will go backwards rapid style but hey ho at least we'll get to see Anakin, Davey, Trout etc in the 1st team.

Even Wildie, probably the nearest to being ready, is off the pace at the moment, rather than being disillusioned he's actually happy that he's now receiving the coaching and conditioning that will make him a much better player. I suspect that other juniors with the right attitude are of a similar mind to Wildie and those that aren't probably don't have the attitude to succeed anyway.

The next 3/5 years are transitional and we need to judge RA & AG over that time!

As i've stated before Davey, Wildie etc will not be going anywhere unless we want a large fine. We HAVE to have 8 club-trained players in the top 25 to comply with the rules and tnhese guys are part of that. I think they can go out on loan/dual reg but they have to remain on our books.

The voice of reason; it'll never catch on.

From what i've seen of him Aiton is a better hooker than Sam, he has much better distribution and is just as quick out of the ruck. What he doesn't give you is the cover in the halves that Sam would, though with Moore waiting in the wings then there is cover there already. Aiton can also play loose forward and with Morrison retiring and Howarth & Masselot released then maybe Agar feels the extra cover he provides in this area makes him a better bet. Though saying all that it wouldn't surprise me if we end up with both, especially with no announcement yet about Smiths visa. The club was expecting a decision a week ago on that.

Good!
I'm fed up with signing players based on their ability to cover 5 or 6 positions, better that we sign a specialist and if he gets injured we bring in a specialist to cover him, revolutionary or what!

on nrl page of rlfans under ooc players it say hes got dodgy knees and may be retiring but the one nobody has mentioned is collis as he got his visa yet

not sure, but James Webster made reference to when Collis joins the rest of the boys in pre season in the interview he gave for WildcatsTV last week.

I'm not directing this at you TheLinkMan, but it's quite comical really that those players that aren't on twitter (Collis/Smith) generate a bit of concern about whether they're coming or not because some fans who are also twitter users don't have direct contact with them. Because Bluey Southern and Isaac John have given the fans a direct insight into the progress of their visa applications, coupled with the fact that they're the two who are already here, it's the not knowing that generates suspense.

I suppose the club will let us know when they arrive like they have up to now. Sadly, the only reason we knew when Southern and John were coming was Twitter.

This thread is about Paul Aiton not Matt Utai.

sorry got wrong player