You're right we have. Not sure ours all came at the same time like St Helens have so ours were easier to manage.

Anyhow, I think we'll win SL again without having to rely on St Helens injuries. You're right on the discipline though but having watched the Bulls 33-20 game last night no way was Bentham even handed. The amount of forward passes we get away with though is something else.

Obviously my use of the word 'humble' would exclude your good self from the collective description.

That said even you have opined that the squad could be stronger which I have taken as partial acceptance that this year's squad is understrength within the constraints of the salary cap.

Regardless of what you or I says on the matter the CEO agrees with the general proposition.

By using that criterion every fan of every team in SL would consider their squad to be under strength as I'm sure everyone believes their club's squad [icould[/i be stronger.

Jesus, I go and do some work for a few hours and find you've moved on 3 pages. A summation of my thoughts are:

Squad strength could be stronger but after the Eastwood issue we're left with the hand that we're dealt. I believe that if GH could have got out of that deal he would but the appeal process is still ongoing so I'm guessing that the contract allows Eastwood that luxury.

Whilst that is ongoing we couldn't makea long term replacement signing due to the 2010 salary cap and the club have therefore decided to go with what we have. I doubt any decent players would havecome as a short term replacement.

The loss in the CC meant the players will get a rest and therefore the club could concentrate on long-term planning (subject to Eastwood's appeal). This means that the club will have space to react to injuries in any position rather than get a replacement forward and then find that both your halfbacks suffer season ending injuries. To date only one serious injury has come about and don't forget at the start of the season we were playing with An injured fullback, two wings who had swapped positions, an experiment at right centre, a backup centre who had had longterm injuries in the previous seasons and no experienced backup for our halves apart from the current LF. AS has been said the club have got away with it because there have been no serious injuries (with the exception of Kirke)but if the club had recruited and injuries had happened in other areas they would have been no better off.

With regard to trophies I am very happy with our haul compared with the previous 20 years I have been a supporter, the club could have won other trophies and nearly did but that is by the by.

I am very happy with how the club is run. There could have been things that could have been better, but I've also had doubts that have been proven wrong. The club has been strong and competitive for at least the ast ten years and looks to be able to continue in that vein going forward.

They have 9/10 games left if they are to appear in the GF with at least two weekends off. At this stage they are improving as a unit both in attack and discipline. defence has fallen off a bit but that can be recovered . Unless further injuries hit hard I cannot see too much of a problem and I'm sure all the other clubs (even Saints given their injuries) would like to be in our positionat present.

If you are at salary cap level you can't improve the squad.

As Leeds are under for 2009 they could and rightly or wrongly I view G1's comment in that light.

Little point with false modesty



yes, I think the squad "could" be stronger. I humbly defer my rebuttal to Mr gilder's eloquent post.

What proposition? That the squad "could" be stronger or that the squad isn't strong enough to win the title because I doubt its' the latter.

Why can't you?

Does a player's salary give the definitive comment on his ability?

What is to say that sacrificing a higher earner for someone who say plays a different position and commands a lower salary wouldn't provide for a better balanced and thereby "stronger" squad?

Weren't leeds missing some key players last week when they completed the double over the 4th placed team in the league?

I don't think a speight of injuries to key players proves anything other than rotten luck for the team that suffers them.

Have Saints goen into the season under strength because of the poor luck they're having with injuries?

The former when he said in the YEP on the 14th July 2009: "There’s no doubt we have been running light, particularly with our forward options this year.”

The proposition states that a club is at the limit of their permitted salary cap spend in a given season.

Do you have a practical example of a club sacrificing a contracted higher earner (who would need another club to have space to pick up such a salary for it to be removed from the selling clubs books altogether.)

I'm thinking you'll offer Warrington with the Gleeson - Mathers deal but it's impossible to know what Warrington would have achieved any different had Gleeson still been there.

When it seems to happen year after year I'd say it shows the club has problems with their training, be it the facilities or the methods. Mr McDermott made that point on Boots N All last night with regards to Hull, who do seem to go through this process every year.

It used to be Leeds with the hamstrings IIRC

If Leeds do go on to win the title again, it will be partially down to luck, that we didn't get a whole load of injuries at the same time, and partly down to faith in the depth that we have from our juniors. Of course we know that the first 17 is as strong as any in the league.

You could argue that we was, and as I said earlier, recruitment is different now, to what it was in 2002 when we signed him.

I personally think he was an established SL player when we signed him, which rules him out of that category.

I wasn't thinking about his signing for Leeds specifically. At the equivalent age he'd trod a similar path to that of Sam Moa although Moa has now arrived in SL at a younger age than Poching did.

Willie Poching was an outstanding player for both Wakefield and Leeds IMO and if that's an example of a 'Kolpak Stiff' then they can't be all bad.

One of the founder playing squad of the Hunter Mariners before his arrival in England IIRC - not sure how many SL appearances he made Down Under though...

Poching was a great servant to leeds and Wakey, but there should be plenty of players being produced by clubs of a similar standard. The reason is that clubs would rather sign a ready made product like Poching, or Moa, or Korkidas, or plenty of the other foreign players out there, as its easier than developing their own.

But Moa isn't ready made.

When we played Hull at Heaingley Sky attributed a quote to Agar that Moa was "a project".

In all this debate I'm still unsure as to which players those who believe we are understrength consider that we should have signed.
It's pointless simply spending money for the sake of it just because we can.
I'm sure that the management team have done their best to seek additional players but have decided that those available or on offer would not add to the existing squad.

You could argue that Gleeson was available and would have improved our backline. It may be that we didn't want to touch him with a bargepole, information that most fans aren't privvy to.

We could have signed Solia for next season, it wouldn't have done much good this year though.

Can't think of many other signings that othe SL clubs have made that I regretted us not getting, doesn't mean that others weren't available though

Would we have had to get rid of players to fit Gleeson in under the cap given that Eastwood may be here next year (I think this deal was done before Smith confirmed he was leaving for Wasps)

I can imagine the outcry from some quarters if Leeds had bust the bank to sign Martin Gleeson - "why are we signing a player at the end of his career who is going to get in the way of Watkins/Gibson/Ratu/Broughton?"

Your second two sentences are what is more relevant.

Gleeson is irrelevant. He wasn't what we needed.

The club themseleves have identified that the forwards were needed, hence the signing of Eastwood. Eastwood did not materialize so we were light, meaning that players of the calibre of Kirke are now established starters. The club have realized this problem and signed 2 more forwards, one of which they have signed immediately.

The issue is, could they have done something about it earlier? Players do not have to be made publically available to be available. And has 2010 recruitment been damaged because of the Eastwood affair?

So do you know that nothings happening/happened behind the scenes then???????
You know we went after pritchard,soliola and recently millard i'd say that they have tried to do the deals but 1 reason or another they haven't come off.
As for the 2010 recruitment only time will tell how/if that's been disrupted.

Quite so. Pitts wasn't available publically but it didn't stop Leeds making an approach to Wakefield and for the signing to follow shortly after.