Saddened
So just buying in expensive players is your idea of 'investing' in the squad. Other people think developing youth to give longer term success is true investment.

Or were you being sarcastic and actually meant the exact opposite to what you said?

Clubs do what they think is right and can afford to do. There is no guarantee either way will succeed. We have young players in our squad. Perhaps you are just better at producing them than us. Maybe one day we wont have to buy players too.

unfortunately until the stadium is complete we will have to hold of purchasing any new players and support those who do the best they can, we have a great youth policy and great senior players, have faith.

Saints have made many big signings over the years to give them success. Their strategy may have changed slightly at the moment, but I suspect that once the stadium is in place and potentially freeing up resources then they will go with that again.

People overstate the investment that Wire have put into their squad. Wages are irellevant, as long as we stay within the salary cap, we are doing the same as everyone else, signing players for the same money. People say things about Morley and King, making out we flashed the cash, when actually we didn't pay transfer fees and simply allocated them a portion of our salary cap that perhaps other teams didn't have free (or want to spend on them).

We have spent a bit of cash on Myler (how is he 3rd at 7 behind Eastmond and Tomkins - Tomkins isn't even a 7!), Atkins and Carvell last year. The fact is that you can develop kids all you want (and our squad contains a good nucleus of young local lads) but at times you need to top up your squad with class.

I'm sure I don;t need to remind anybody of Saints signing the likes of Sculthorpe or Newlove, or Leeds signing Peacock, Harris or Senior, or Wigan signing Fielden (okay bad example!).

i agree with that, as long as they're within the cap, good luck to them. a good recruitment policy currently, shame they're youth setup isnt the same, the tompkins lads for a start are from warrington originally what a difference they could have made.

If they can afford it, then I don't see any problem. As Dave T says sometimes you have to look outside to bring players in. Warrington could have waited for Atkins and Myler to become free agents, but then would have got into a bidding war over salaries. They decide it was better for them to pay the transfer fee and get the players signed.

Time will tell if it is a wise move.

I think you will find that it was the Tomkins parents who were from Warrington and the lads were born in Milton Keynes.

They were brought up as wire fans, i've heard that from Sam himself, so if wire had a youth setup on par with your own, i imagine they'd have the england 6 and possible future england 13 in their playing squad now.

I am happy with our squad as it stands.

We have a 17 I think can take on any in the league and a squad that will compliment them over the course of a season.

Youngsters such as Wheeler, Ashurst, Dixon etc all stepped up last year and will have benefitted massively from their experiences.

With a returning Fozzard replacing the unfortunate Cayless our options up front should be boosted.

Like every other team if we lose a couple of props we could struggle.

The youth setup has improved a hell of a lot, Cullen made sure that we needed to sort this out, however it is not an overnight fix.

Looking at the squad, Riley, Penny, Cooper, Wood, Blythe, Mitchell, McCarthy have had plenty of gametime for the past few years and will continue to this year.

There has been plenty of attention on the young lads that we are signing up in the last year or two, and hopefully this will continue and they will provide a steady stream into the first team.

A system where you promote from within and sign one or two class players each year has to be the best solution.

i hope your system continues to improve, you clearly can produce talent in your catchment area,so i hope you can convert it to players

Not forgetting Ben Harrison as well.

Wire have a young centre Rhys Evans who has every chance of becoming a big name in Super League.

I went through my list twice, God knows how I could forget the best talent of the lot!!!!

Rhys Evans was the best young player I saw at academy level last year.

Funkin' eck. You don't half have above your quota.

Warrington seem to have impressed the pundits. skybet have the Dire 3rd favourite for winning the GF behind us and the whinos in 1st place.

think bradford and hull will be stronger this year

I think Bradford are the outsiders with the halfs they have could rip up any team on there day !

They haven't got much strength in depth though. Beyond their 17, it is all youngsters with not much experience between them.

sounds familiar

I'm pretty happy that after Leeds the 3 favourites for the league are the local sides of Saints, Wigan and Warrington. Yes we all have a rivalry but it makes for an interesting season and the games between the 3 teams should be as good as we've seen for a long while. The Wigan and Warrington game has been getting bigger year on year and the Derby looks to be back in decent health after our shambolic preformences in recent times.

As for the chances of the 3......I expect Saints to still be challenging Leeds in the top 2. I said it a few times last year and i'll say it again you need Leon Pryce to stand up as the senior halfback at the club and lead the way. He went missing far too often last season but if he can find that form you'll go very very close in both comps.

I'd imagine Wire and Wigan will be there or thereabouts. I think Wires got the better first 17 but we may have a little more depth provided by some top class kids and then slightly more experienced guys like Goulding, Pryce, Mossop, McIlorum etc. I can see us along with Wire, Catalans and Huddersfield battling it out for positions 3-6.

Should be fun.

If Saints don't start well or get any more than one or two injuries we won't threaten the top 4 let alone the top 2. People have forgotten how simply awful we were last season. Even when we were winning it was like pulling teach. This season we're down on experienced players so could add headlesschickenitis to the general lack of pace and attacking flair and strength in depth.

Some other people have forgotten we got far more than one or two injuries last year and were leading the league for a period and went very close to winning the GF.



You say we're down on experienced players, but Cayless didn't play and has been replaced by Foz who is very experienced. Gilmour has been replaced by a NZ international and NRL regular - hardly lacking experience. Longy has left but there are not many in world RL who would prefer to keep him over Eastmond, who has gained the experience of playing (well) against Australia and NZ at 7. Moore will provide further cover for the halves/hookers now Long has moved on and will be a useful extra ball player for us.

It remains to be seen how we cope without Longy, but given Long was very much a part of the drab RL you keep banging on about and Eastmond was pretty much the only spark we had out there at times last year, I can't see us lacking too much by swapping the 2 around. I can see Wheeler and Lomax getting much more time on the pitch this year which will add some pace too.

The extra attention that defences will have to pay to Eastmond simply as a result of his pace should allow Pryce more freedom. Teams were doubling up on Leon for pretty much all of last year and could do so in the knowledge that Long no longer had the pace to fully exploit them. They won't have that luxury with Eastmond alongside Pryce.

Unless Wire get another big lad to play at prop they won't finish in the top three this year.

you're getting boring now. We managed 2nd last year through a truely horrific injury crisis, gained scott moore, foz and soliola for longy, gilmour and cayless, more than a fair swap for me