So you're wanting to play Westerman at stand-off? Jesus Christ.




If we did sign Ellis I'd have Manu, Tickle and Ellis starting and move Westerman to the bench.

When he's at Loose he plays like a stand-off anyway, what's the difference? Not enough to justify a "Jesus Christ"

I'm sure he can dummy and get tackled just as good as Horne can

Tickle to prop for me.

Westerman is far too good a player to be sat warming the bench, he needs to be on the park 80mins.
The only way we accomadate Ellis is to play Westerman at stand off,

Westerman at 6?

Is last season forgotten?

Just because Manu, Tickle, Westerman and Ellis can play 80 doesn't mean they have to.

And if they're spelled between each other they'll stay fresher and we would see the best out of them.

The fact is that although Ellis is one of the best backrowers in the world, it's a position that we have a lot of strength in and the money that we would be spending on him would be better utilised in strengthening other areas of the squad.

Its like Rich Agar never left.

Maybe we're in for him because one of our current 2nd rowers won't be here?

If we're in for him and one of our 2nd rowers isn't leaving then its a daft signing. Can't imagine Tickle, Manu and Westerman are on a low wage, Ellis surely commands a 6 figure salary. I don't think £350k+ on 4 back rowers is getting the right value for money out of the cap.

Thats how i see it its probably the strongest area of the team and for how good ellis is they are bigger priorties at the minute at centre and prop.

No, but would the players like having their gametime cut, and more importantly, would it benefit the team?

Even if we spread the gametime evenly, that would mean nobody playing more than 60 minutes, but in reality 1 or 2 are going to play longer than that, so you could end up with someone only playing 40-50 minutes most weeks. Now that's not a problem in itself, but it doesn't really make sense when all 4 are probably amongst your top earners, so somebody expensive is going to spend up to half the game on the bench.

I think unless Tickle is going to move up to prop (even if it's just for one spell), Ellis may be too expensive to justify overstrengthening one area when we have more pressing need elsewhere. The only other way would be to lose Manu to accomodate him, and that's a big no-no for me.

That's the only way it would make sense, and would point to Manu. I don't think that would be a good move as IMO Ellis is more in the Tickle mould and nobody else in the squad offers what Manu does.



Totally agree on the last point, although with the first a positional switch and a prop leaving may work.

Positional switch would mean Tickle to prop I assume? It would make sense but I'm not sure Tickle himself would agree to it, he's had a fine 2010 & 11 and started like a house on fire this year. Plus there's talks of rep honours (only at the club I accept) at the end of the year. Don't think he'd want to change.