Looking at that catalan squad, I dont think they will be either, look very strong on paper, walsh and myler stay fit (which is unlikely) they could have a very good year. As far as us goes, no reason why we cant push for both trophies really, like a few others, worry about injuries to our forwards and having the players that can step in and make a difference, most have written Thompson off , but out off all fringe and bench players, really think he could, and is most likely to step it up this year. Possibly not having the characters around the place off pritchard and pryce could make a differance, think a lot of the team moral, togetherness came from them 2

As we know stats tell you everything...but let's look at it shall we.
Minichello who hardly got subbed all season made 91 tackle busts to Pritchards 34, even jordan Thompson made almost as many TB and yet made 500+tackles in about the same game time Pritchard had.
Minichello 485, Ellis 577 tackles, Pritchard 335, so about 40% fewer.
Pritchard often came on after 20 25 minutes, sometimes even with less on the clock.
for the amount of time he was on the pitch he put an awful lot of pressure on the other forwards at times and first half of the season he was nowhere near fit.
But to the clean breaks, yeah, when you're coming on after 20-25minutes you're bound to be able to make more clean breaks and make more metres right. I mean, that was his sole purpose pretty much as an impact off the bench player and yet far too often that wasn't the case.
How many games would you say he had a big impact, half a dozen, maybe, some impact no doubt but for the 'top' player at the club his return was way way below par as a whole.
IMHO I think we are better off without him, we have enough big props, we can have more mobile forwards such as a Thompson or whoever that are tackling more, making as many tackle breaks and can do more minutes if need be.
It's not all about bish bash bosh.

Can't believe you've watched the game all year and seen nothing
Not sure what the minichello point is about but you've started comparing thommo to frank. Which is fair in terms of game time and role played within the team

Tackle busts frank did make more
More breaks
More try assists
More offloads
More tries
More carries
Nearly 2.2 metres a carry more
Over 800 more metres and regarding tackles ..Frank never made many because he was avoided like the plague. .something I was always suprised people never picked up on more. He missed 15 all year. Puts him 21st lowest hull player. Only lower were players who only played a couple of games. I remember early catalans game. Only had to make 3 tackles. Next game 7. Tremendous defender for a big man
Our bench is weaker without him without doubt. But there in is the problem..A marquee player shouldn't be a bench player tbf

Simple fact, he wasn't worth his salary, even 10% of it would have been generous.

As pointed..He was top of or near a lot of the main forward stats. Among the highest in all of the league in some. He wasn't what we needed tbh. Not for the players we already had on board. But if you weigh all of it up..The buzz he brought..The off field tightness of the group he obviously helped harness and although on field wasn't what we expected he was still no where remotely as bad as some make out. Not even close. His you tube highlights did him no favours to those who don't know any better imo
I'll always regret not seeing him playing wide as an outright 2nd row for us. But given our squad it couldn't happen. Right player wrong time. Is the right decision to let him go though

Sums it up for me.

Statements like "Simple fact, he wasn't worth his salary, even 10% of it would have been generous" are a bit one-eyed really.

He'll certainly leave a hole in our go forward (as the stats point out), but that hole isn't quite as big as one that should've been left by a marquee player, for various reasons.