Veivers never got offered a contract. The figure i heard for Kevin Penny was 50K a year, whether that is true or not i'm not sure. One of Teds whims the story went. I would have kept Howarth on as well but dual reg'd him. He needs to bulk up a little but I think with a good pre-season behind him he would have something to offer.

I would be a bit disappointed to see Howarth go, I thought he showed some signs of promise last year.

Having said that if the players we have brought in are better then so be it. Looking at back row forwards we have

Mariano
Johnson
Southern
Lauititi
Morrison
Kirmond
Raleigh
Washbrook
Howarth

I know a couple of them may end up propping (Johnson, Raleigh??) but even so that's a lot of players to fit into 3 spaces in the team.

Howarth is a completely different player to most of those backrowers (probably same for washbrook), more an out and out LF and i would be disappointed if he left tbh. Thought he was one of our better players on a consistent basis and was pretty error free.

Come off it you cant develop someone just because they are young and english they have to show a bit of something ! Vievers showed nothing at all he is a very lucky lad to have been playing super league rugby!

Agree I think Howarth has some potential and wih better players around him could do a good job. Wonder whether he is the english based player off to Cas ?

Agreed. I think Washbrook and Howarth are fairly similar in there styles. Only difference been Washbrook is now at the stage where im not sure he will improve that much where as Howarth still had improvement in him. RA's call but if he does go i personally think he will go on to have a decent Super League career.

We all want a winning side but from a PR side of things to bring in John, Smith and (maybe Tongia??) and lose Howarth, Penny & Veivers in the same week is not the greatest stat.

I'm not sure I agree - Penny and Veivers are simply not up to the job, and since the average interested observer probably doesn't know or care what nationality the players are, losing them in favour of better players will probably be good PR.

Most 'casual' (i.e non-anorak, like us) fans just want to see good players winning games - on paper, our new squad looks like it can do significantly more of that than we've become used to; roll on next Feb.

Have to agree about Vievers, neitehr really saw anything from him that made me think he was going to make a decent SL player. Not particularly quick, strong or astute positionally. Not much to build on. He'll do ok in the next level down you would imagine but not SL imo.

Howarth I can't honestly remember doing anything, positive or negative. Not because he didn't but because I never really picked him out. There were that many new faces last year I spent half of the matches trying to work out who was who.

I agree to an extent, i mentioned in my previous post that i didnt think they were upto it but to the rest of the RL world its an easy pop. 3 brits out 3 overseas in etc.. but yes, the 1000 to 2000 floating Trinity "fans" will probably not care.

In an ideal world we would have 17 lads born in the UK (ideally within a WF postcode) running out every week but unfortunately that isnt going to happen anytime soon, in fact, we are probably closer to the opposite.

Obviously I didn't just mean because he was English.
Personally I think he has time to develop and I'd give him a shot.
It was all just too soon for him in my opinion. Don't mind that you disagree. That's just the way it is.

Totally agree - if, by the end of this franchise period, we're not significantly closer to that 'ideal world' than we are now, plenty of people will be less than gruntled, including me.

Lets hope its short term pain for long term gain. I wish the lads that are leaving well for the future.