If Crooks demands for a new contract are deemed too much and he can get better elsewhere then let him go now for a fee or get him to play out his current deal and he can move on then. However until he leaves I can't see the logic in freezing him out. He's still getting paid and remains a capable player, better than some of the alternatives we have tried in the centres where the policy is anyone but Crooks. Not playing him for what seems non playing reasons looks petty and spiteful and I can't see how it helps Hull win.

It was a fair comment to throw in. Whatever the reason is (if there is indeed and reason and it's not just rumour) then the club should be asking themselves why he wants to leave and what they could have done to prevent it. Presuming they want to prevent it.

The thing is, if I was him I wouldn't be signing a new deal unless it was for the money I wanted in his shoes, either. At the start of the season he'd just won YPOTY, was in the reigning dream team, and been handed the number 3 shirt. Hull will have had excessive value out of him last year whilst he was probably on a relatively low wage, and he was probably backing himself to have another good season and strengthen his bargaining position. I can understand why he'd hold back on committing himself.

Since then we've gone down the pan quicker than a lead turd, with him not getting a great time of things seemingly, so he's possibly got some new and just as understandable reasons for not being keen on staying.

What is slight potential to worry to me is this new stance on player worth. We've apparently been paying over the odds recently, but are now possibly going the other way and treating it as some sort of unbreakable rule that players have to be paid what we deem fit or else be hounded out of the building. That's possibly cutting our noses off to spite our faces. Being sensible, any decent deal for a player worth having will end up with a club paying slightly more than they'd like and the player earning slightly less than he was hoping for. The trick for the club is for good coaching to improve the player enough to 'recoup' the extra money.

Obviously I'm not claiming to know any details or making any judgment on who is right/wrong in this specific circumstance.

with your permission, I'd like to borrow that term in a meeting I have tomorrow?

Not necessarily. If they keep proving themselves worth what they ask for they'll do fine.

The mistake some fans make is to pick a side without knowing the facts.

As for abundance, I'd say that solid defensive centres are certainly more common than the ones who can open the opposition defence. Partly because with decent coaching the defensive side of the game is much more teachable.

Help yourself.

Great post Carl (crying with laughter at the turd comment!). I think that is a good theory on what Crook's thoughts might have been and are now. I also agree with your worries about player worth. The "over the odds" wages that were alluded to when Radders and Motu were appointed certainly needed addressing but not to the point were we do a complete 180. We now seem to even be reluctant to sign up some of our youngsters like Abdull and Lancaster.

Unfortunately AP believes we can follow the Leeds model, were all players could earn more elsewhere but they buy in to the view that winning trophies consistently overcomes the 10 - 15% shortfall in income. That and the possibility that they earn bonuses for each trophy collected.

This cannot work at the moment at FC as we lack the strength and depth of squad and quality. Therefore there is little choice but to pay over the odds, or at least match the best salaries, which is made more difficult with clubs like Salford willing to inflate wages.

sorry, more excuses, Salford operate in the same cap as we should, it is time people realised (B)Radford couldn't drive a coach, let alone coach a professional club.

Sorry, and I don't want to be rude, but smell the coffee folks, he couldn't run a bath.

The way I see it is that the club has other issues aswell, and changing the coach won't suddenly see us winning trophies and competing at the top. However, unless something big is going on that no one has caught wind of yet, these other off field problems are fairly minor, and simply aren't an excuse for the large number of woeful performances we have dished out this year.

The argument that the Radford supporters seem to be going with now is that McRae shafted us and now we have a squad that isn't good value for money, and I would agree with that to an extent. This might have been a valid excuse had we stagnated and ended up 6th or 7th, but it isn't an excuse for us having the worst season in 15 years.

We are now going to have at least 2 years of rebuilding to get anywhere near where we want to be. The first act of this process has to be to get a coach in who has vision and experience, so that he can oversee this period. Radford simply isn't the man to do this.

or a p*ss up in a brewery .... oh hang on.........

Do you really stand by woeful performances?

We've won 7 and lost 13 with 1 draw, including 2 stuffing's by the Pie's. Now with that record you'd expect to be well into negative points difference, but we're still plus 43, a better points difference than the five teams above us.

I'd say more inability to win matches we should/could have, rather than woeful performances.

Woeful performances aren't always the games we get stuffed in. Widnes at the KC was a woeful performance for example.

So was the 2nd half against Wakey.

Everyone knows how high we would be up the table if we had won most of the games we have lost by 1 try or less. But even if we had won these games the level of performance, skill and entertain is still woeful.