Wouldn't all these players be ideal for the reserves? Can't see us being able to cobble together a reserves side at this rate...or more importantly being able to adequately cover for injuries which are definitely gonna happen. Trust in Tony I guess eh.

Is it a concern that virtually every player you have signed is with Mcguires best mate Craig Harrison?

It reminds me of when Mcrae use to only use Howes as an agent to buy players

It’s not too near the top of my list. Harrison has a lot of players, I believe, and i’m confident Tony Smith will have plenty of input moving forward. Some of these were probably done or in the works before he joined, of course.

We’ve announced 9 from SL/championship so farcurrently look a bit thin - I hope/assume there are a handful more, even after Parcell is confirmed. If Lannon ain’t coming back, it’d be good if we could get Murray. Trout did okay in his few games I thought. Then I feel like we need a half and another high end signing to complement all the lads who are 22 to 24, hopefully on the cusp, but still a little bit green.

Got to hope that this new broom will do a better job of fixing the mentality of the team than some previous recent attempts. Quality and depth wise I think we need to do better than break even too.

Litten, Hadley, Ryan, Minikin, Rawsthorne and Maher are with Harrison I know, not sure on the others. I know it's tough to recruit in the position you get yourself in, but are the likes of Abdul, Minikin, Ryan better than Drinkwater, Shaw and Keinhorst.

I'd also question the need to use your last non fed spot on a winger/centre when you need 1 maybe 2 half backs.

Hadley Litten Maher Minikin Ryan all under his agency..So is Ryan Hampshire

Cheers - and to Jimmyfivebellies too.

It’s a tricky balancing act with the quota/non-fed, definitely. I’m not sure how we’ll use SKD and how that’ll effect the structure of the squad - e.g. if TS sees him as a centre, will Linnet play more in the back row? We’ve lost a fair bit of experience and ‘pedigree’, with McGuire retiring and Tomkins departing, so I think SKD is a good signing in prospect, and part of what we need.

Halfback is a concern though, having lost McGuire, Drinkwater and Atkin and only gained Abdull. Mikey Lewis seems to be highly thought of but even so there’s a void to be filled.

I think the high turnover is about rejuvenation to some extent, and creating a blank slate on which TS can hopefully build a different collective mindset. More than dramatically or even significantly improving the quality in the short-term, which isn’t really feasible. We need to raise our sights, whoever takes the field and I think, despite apparently working hard, a few played themselves out of his long-term planning in the final weeks.

I struggle to find the right words to describe what I think (from the outside) was wrong... a sort of gentle resignation, or subconscious acceptance that we weren’t good enough. And to be fair we’ve been largely building from the discard pile for a while, and relegation set us back significantly, but other teams in similar situations have done better. It wasn’t so much that we struggled but that we seemed to expect no better. Sheens, who I think deserves great credit for 2017, and getting us over the line in 2018, started this year talking about top 5, but was soon saying our aim in each game had to be to stay in contention into the closing stages. Cling on and hope for the best was how it sounded to me. First year after promotion, fair enough - but after that not so much.