Yep good luck to them, Had any other SL club brought one of these two in isolation they’d have probably stuck with them and maybe they’d have done better. it was just a perfect storm of terrible recruitment for us when we really needed short term improvement.

Pele is a raw talent and think most clubs would have stuck with him and seen how it went in a second season. It was obvious quickly Okunbor wouldn’t make it as a SL back rower but most clubs would have eventually used him as an athletic winger and he’d have likely done alright. Neither seemed bad lads just not what we need now.

Don't agree on Ockunbor, just not SL standard, I've seen some highlights of him scoring trys, but also seen him be awful in defence and that's at championship level. People talk about the fact we play him the backrow, but forget he played the last two years there in the NRL and was chosen to play there rather than the wing by one of the best NRL coaches. He was poor on the wing and backrow.

Pele has potential, but had a poor attitude at Hull.

Aydin came in last season also didn't he ?

Yea, but wasn't from Smith's diaster recruitment.

Them three didn't count on cap anyways as we didn't register them for this season, imagine asking a question of our starting 17 two weeks into pre season and when 2/3 haven't trained yet.

Matt Peet saying Byrne is going nowhere.

I never once thought otherwise to be fair, one of their first choice props

I suspect we are going to try and sign Byrne on the 1st December for the 2026 season, if that happens, think there is a chance he comes early, Wigan have a vast array of props, and could easily release him and promote from within. I doubt Wigan would be able to match the kind of money we could offer him for a 3 year deal.

They have Hill, Harvard, Mago, Dupree and Thompson, who would all get into most SL sides, add in Eseh and a couple of other lads they will have coming through, I think there is a good chance we can get Byrne for 2026, if not 2025.

It really does annoy me that as a club we continually pay players off without a replacement agreed.

No matter peoples thoughts on Pele, he was better than Gardner and we would’ve probably won more games with pele in our side. Last year we let 3 quota players leave and only really brough Jed in to replace them (King for one game).

This year we’ve paid off 3 and by the looks of it with no replacement lined up. Walker has no club to go to, why not let him train with us and look for a new club.

If he finds a new club we let him go, if, god forbid, Rapana or Moy go down with a long term injury we can keep him for the season.

All we seem to do is close one door without having another ready to walk through.

Should we lose Moy & Rapana. The option would be to use Hardaker but currently Litten is out so we then have to use someone like lane or Roman Dawson (who isn’t ready yet IMO)

You can make that argument for pretty much every position on the field.
Besides the 3 players being released have already been replaced. Rapana has replaced Walker, Cust has replaced Smith and Tindall was effectively replaced by Briscoe last year.

Can't keep someone on Walkers wage as 3rd choice, even as backup its not worth it, we have to do better with our cap management.

Last year, we did give up, but Pele was righly released, poor attitude, had to move those type of people out of the club.

Also isn't it still the case that if a player plays 1minute they count on the cap. I seem to remember we got stung years ago for Andy Last playing a game and then his coaching wage counted on the cap and took us over.

So paying some to be backup is pointless if you then can't actually play them in an emergency.

Just seen an article on how we nearly signed Zach Dockar Clay (played for KR in the championship) for the 2024 season, but he decided to stay at Roosters. I presume it was instead of Nu Brown. Just shows how clueless our recruitment was, another utility pivot. When we crying out for a scrum half to replace Clifford, we ended up with Walker and Brown.

Saw that and thought the same, it was one of them clickbait articles but seemed like a direct quote from him that he was about to join Hull and and changed his mind. I suppose in the clubs defence it’s pretty clear that there was very little quality 7s that would have been willing to come and play SL.

We went for Clune as the first target and got blown out the water by Hudds. He’d have been a lot better but he’s on a big 3 year contract at Hudds. He hardly set the world alright and had very little first grade experience anyway they’ve probably got buyers remorse now. Shows just how tough a market it was, in hindsight maybe not letting Clifford go until we had something sorted might have been a better move, that would have been risky though.

I think ZDC was for this season, someone told me we were after him in June, then we went for Rimba, then Cust.