Some people worry too much.

With Litten, he didn't play much this season, but probably our best performance of the season, the victory over Wigan, he was a stand out player for us that day and he only came of the bench.

That's what we do, we write them off early. Like Jez Litten and Dean Hadley, who'll both be playing in the showpiece game this Saturday.

Apparently we need some Australian who can't get a game down under, instead.

Was reading about the Melbourne side in the run up to the NRL grand final last week, would make his head spin. They have a deliberate policy of looking for and giving players a chance who’ve been dumped/rejected elsewhere and even worse do the unthinkable of trying those players in different positions to what they are supposed to be specialist in.

No better example than halfback Jahrome Hughes. NRL player of the year halfback was dumped by the Cowboys and Gold Coast playing only two NRL games until he was 23, Played all his junior career at fullback and didn’t play as a halfback until he was 25.

It’s absolutely mental that looking for a long term Billy Slater replacement Melbourne decided to target players who could play a bit of halfback as well as fullback and had been rejected by other clubs. They signed Jahrome Hughes, Cam Munster, Papenhuyzen, Nicho Hynes and Scott Drinkwater.

I’ve never been a ‘play the youngsters at all cost’ type of fan, but there’s absolutely no argument that the most successful sides on both sides of the world have the most faith and patience with young players.

Absolutely spot on, the internet expert is not always right give these kids a chance.

I think the key is finding the right balance and agree that the most successful clubs manage that balance. For me, we struggle to do that. This year for example we have overexposed a lot of our youngsters but in the past we've done the exact opposite and blocked youngsters pathways. As has been pointed out, two of our ex youngsters are now about to feature in the Grand Final and both left us when they did because they couldn't get game time with us. If you look at someone like Saints for example, they had to make a decision a few seasons back regarding sticking with Coote or backing Welsby. I guarantee FC would have stuck with Coote and Welsby would have ended up moving on.

I like the approach the club seem to be taking now. They recognise that the youngsters are our imminent future but not our immediate present and are bringing in players to help mentor and guide them over that period. Time will tell if the club gets it right but it does feel that they have a balanced plan in place.

Some of the youngsters will get some game time again next season due to the new player welfare minutes played ruling coming into effect for 2025 .

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Going back to speculation on our IMG grading, HDM have revealed that we have scored 2.8571 points for performance. Didn't realise that we got nearly 3 points for merely being in the top flight.

If Dan Tomlinson is trailing a Grade B, I think we all know it will be a Grade B, and rightly so.

I think it would be based purely on our drop in performance score, which is the sole focus of the article, however we don't know how w will fare on the other grading categories. We could improve our score on social media stuff, or if any investment is sorted, loans paid off, etc then we may improve on the financial category. Hopefully we do, and that is enough to negate the loss of performance points.
Whether Tomlinson (or even the club) know anything or not yet about our overall grade, not a clue!

I don't think we deserve to beva grade A club, must improve on.the field, grade A gives us complacency, which we have has too much of recently.

does it really matter
IMG have done nothing since being appointed apart from trying to run R/L by speadsheets.
Ask yourself what have they done to actually enhance the sport.The answer is a big sweet FA.
Getting rid of promotion and relegation is the most stupid move i have ever seen.
Whats the point of having a Championship play off

Agree

I noticed when looking at the criteria for the grading last week that performance only accounts for 25% of the overall score. Whilst I agree that the other criteria are important, nothing should be more important than performance. Should be 50% of the grading with the other areas making up the other 50% combined in my opinion.

I'll help you all out. 2026 recruitment is already well into the final stages, we have back up and good back up in every position with a group of 5 young kids all been nurtured to play 2025/26 and not thrown to the wolves, all part of the progression at Rovers. When we lose a player like Minchella for two games we had Dean Hadley who covered and we won both games against very good opposition. There are no real weaknesses in the Rovers squad and with MM and JWH we have some proven leaders/winners that will take us through 2025 in a better place than this year. Martin in the second row and his goal kicking solves a problem when we lost 3 games to goal kicks, we only lost 6 games in the league all year. Replacing Ryan Hall is a biggie, he has been immense but as Catalan don't really use wingers as wingers, Hall's replacement will be more than adequate. Signing the young forward from Bradford was real coup for the club fending off Warrington, Wakefield, Leeds and the mighty Hull FC? for his signature. Bill Leyland after a year with the Robins will be a shrewd deal given his Matt Parcell similarities. I don't think we have any worries about being in more finals in the coming years. The trophies will come before you lot living in the past join in but the more important thing is the sound financial position Rovers are in, (Cold Play how do we do it) players wanting to sign for top teams as evidenced above will only be enhanced with the signing of the best prop forward in the NRL, JWH. He has already help attract 2 significant signings for 2026 of the caliber you can only dream of. And then there Myler's Misfits, I'll leave the post there for you to drool over