What exemptions do you think homegrown players have? The only allowance home grown players have is a one time “home grown player allowance” which counts for £5,000 pa for up to 10 players (up to a total of 10 players). The 10 players don’t need to all be at the club and can be playing in the UK, France or Australia for the club to maintain the benefit.

There was a period where Lomax was on a central contract along with a couple of others but I thought that stopped a while back?

You can argue that they’re on cheaper contracts due to being homegrown rather than being bought in, but that’s about it. The marquee rule is the only benefit now to recognise home grown; which is why the new rules ultimately won’t work; yes it may allow clubs to protect one junior from being poached; but what happens when the next one comes off the production line? Anything to help the clubs deal with poaching needed to be across multiple home grown players (for example by increasing the minimum earning threshold before being counted on the cap for young/ homegrown players way more significantly; whilst the 30k is a move in the right direction, NRL clubs can offer 80k as their minimum contract without blinking so there’s still a huge discrepancy. Allowing teams to have the first 50k would be a better step).

As for Saints specifically, our youth development seems a little odd at the moment. We seem to be incredible at developing spine players and props (watch out for Roberts, Robertson and Whitby in the halves in the near future; the latter of which has been compared favourably to Dodd, and similarly Delaney, Stephans and Cowen are all tipped to follow the likes of Thompson and Lees) but can’t seem to bring through an outside back or backrower for love nor money at the moment. Maybe it is luck (all youth development is to a certain extent) but there also seems to be a pattern.

Peter Smith now reporting Momirovski is off home to take up a coaching gig with the Chooks.

That to me means Conner and Sivo will n and that would be us done IMO

I guess that would be a good recruitment cycle, but I would still have liked a big bodied 2nd row to give us a big pack. I think collectively our current backrows are too small, but note either of yesterdays recruits can fill in at 2nd row too. A large out and out 2nd row would have complimented McDonnell / Gannon and Bentley.

I have concerns with Gannon because how is he going to avoid head collisions next year? Is he ruled out for the rest of the year as soon as he takes a bang to the head? I would love him to succeed but not sure how this will be possible.

If Sivo comes in as well, would there be much need for another prop/2nd row? Assuming the starting wingers are Handley and then Hall/Sivo rotation, you've got some big metres coming out of back play, hopefully taking the workload off the props (which are already looking a lot better). I wouldn't be complaining if they went and got another forward, mind.

Unless were looking at some UK based players?