I'd say that they use loyalty and reputation to keep wages down,

The fact that the wigans, wires, leeds and saints of the league do underpay youngsters means that they can pay for the best overseas players, surely,

but underpayment is all relative anyway...

The problem we have is we never learnt from hindsight...take Dykes outstanding player yet injury prone and we knew this before signing and we paid the price....
At what point are we going to start seriously investing in our youth, take Tompkins got a 5 yr deal and no doubt a good whack, and Shenton, I could go on...

Briscoe got a five year deal, Lyne and Jack Briscoe got 3 and 4 year deals.

O'meley was a injury risk, Fitzgibbon was a old player.

We've also invested in players like Nicklas, Green, Cunningham, Crooks all young, unproven players on two year deals.

The young players we've let go were deemed not good enough.

Said it many times on here before that I think he's still got so much to learn. He takes far too many wrong options for me and his distribution is average to say the least. You need craft and guile at dummy half and i just don't think Houghtons got it. He gives 100% effort every week and I'd have him coming off the bench as a scooter every week but I'm not enjoying watching him playing 80mins wk in wk out because i don't think it's benefiting anybody, certainly not Hull as a team.

If an NRL club is looking at him good luck to him but he'd need to improve an hell of a lot imo.

Honestly not that fussed. Will need to improve a hell of a lot to make it in the NRL and perhaps with better coaching he could do just that. As it stands though he hasn't progressed enough in the last 18 months and is still well behind most of the other hookers in SL.

Leeds do, Sinfield said as much a year or so back.

Fair comment. If he thinks he's worth more than he's currently getting paid ,then good luck to him . I'm struggling to see which NRL club he'd get a game with tbh.

On reflection you are probably right.....Kath & Gary probably share the same ideas!!

Well if true about Houghton then its looking like

6 Horne
7 Ellis/Long
9 Obst/Heremaia

All seems to be making sense now

I honestly don't think Danny is good enough yet for Australia but give him credit if he's going to take the chance

You are kidding right ? I agree he is not in the same league as say Roby (but few are), but I would place him in the top 6 in SL and his stats will back this, plus in his favour he is British and still young with plenty more development in him.
I disagree that he has not progressed in the last 18 months I actually think he has, still work to do in area's though but that will come....Also it will be interesting to see if we flog our next hooker for the full 80mins nearly every game.

Good post Suzie, I agree with all of that.

If Danny wishes to leave then all the best to him but it wouldn't be a disaster for us.

There is no point downplaying it. If true, this is a horrible and unexpected blow to the club!

It would however, explain the otherwise inexplicable signing of Heremaia.

The situation needs clarification over Houghton from James Rule ASAP in my opinion - the fans deserve to know what is happening either way.

Completely agree. When he went off yesterday, with Long out for the season too, it underlined the extent to which we rely on him IMO. If he goes that leaves us with Yeaman, Horne and Radford as homegrown in our first choice 17, all of whom debuted 10 years ago. In 2007 we beat Bradford in the last regular round with 16 British players of which I think 11 were homegrown. Rubbish state of affairs.

He's not in the top 6 in SL. Some clubs have 2 better hookers than houghton. Isn't top class for me an never will be. We desperately need a good hooker and we haven't had one since swain left