Roof, apologies for my sarcasm, not aimed at you, and thanks for substantiating your comments with facts, or near facts as others might say. Your comment re KPI's very pertinent. And Daveyz999, you are right too, stats dont tell the whole story but they make up most of it provided you don't select. what is the point of a prop with attitude if they play less, tackle less, make fewer metres per carry, fewer carries, have a higher missed tackle %, fewer offloads and clean breaks per game than another, "nice guy" prop. Nothing a good captain should be doing anyway, inspiring the team on the pitch. In sport its results not intent that count as we know all too well!!! Ah Van a good case in point, his stats are only relevant relative to other kickers, whatever their conversion % is. On the other hand he is in the errors, missed tackles and penalties top 25 for the season, and on balance (as also in top 25 most metres) those are the reasons the fans and management concluded: no extension for him. Looking forward Gales offensive game looks good but look at all those missed tackles, but hes not there primarily for his tackling.

Anybody else going to boo him on his return to Odsal?

It's the way forward for me we're too nicey nice at Odsal. If everyone had followed my lead for the Catalans home game and booed Mr Beaver and Ian Henderson we'd have won that game.

Why would you want to boo him?

Really, the one's who deserve the booing would be the board for not offering trying to keep him at Odsal.

That's not true from what i've been told.

Might you be able to expand, suggest in vague terms, allude to, make cryptic commentary, provide an allegory to what you have been told ?

He didn't want to leave.

That he would have stayed says much about the loyalty of Andy to the Bulls.
It says much more about the Bull's decision in shipping him out for a fee.

Then the club were looking to offload him?

Sounds pretty typical to me. Well played Bradford if true.

Is money that tight at the moment at the club? did we [size=200need[/size to sell Andy just to give ourselves a bit of breathing space?
Or is it good business sense to get something when, in a years time we would get nothing (assuming we couldn't afford to make him an offer)
Maybe selling Andy gave us the chance to keep 3 or 4 or more other players, whether it's a good descision or not only time will tell.

Whats more worrying is we haven't come out and announced a new contract for Tom either.

If the Bulls thought it made sound financial sense then all credit to them. I bet most players leaving Man Utd didn't want to leave.

Apparently he wanted an extension of a year at the Bulls but we didnt offer it unfortunately

How early should we be negotiating new deals with players coming to end of contracts?. until we've finished this years retentions and recruitment then we dont know what cap space we potentially have available for upgrades in 2013 as some of this years signings will be on longer than one year deals. eg we let kearney and l'estrange both get upto april/may before renewing their deals. Would have thought tom would be near top of list in terms of players we want to retain and hence talks would start pretty soon in new year. Personally dont think he will sign another SL contract but will go to aus due to family pressure but hope club manage to tie him down.

I'm not sure to be honest - big fish in a small pond here or tiny fish in a big pond over there with his brothers. I think he will stay for a bit.
Unless the club needs to pay some bills or something of course.

club wouldnt get any money if he went at end of his contract next year. suspect if he did sign a new deal it would have NRL get out clause in it like sams. Just tend to think that with all his brothers now down under and his mother staying over here with tom, but going down under a few times a year to visit, he'll maybe come under a bit of peer pressure to follow. hopefully we can make him an attractive enough offer to keep him here but im not holding my breath.

Can't say I'm not disappointed to see Andy leave. He's never let the team down and been the proverbial rock in the pack for what seems like ages. I definitely wish him well though (cept when they play us, natch).

I've said before though, that we really need to judge the ins and outs as a whole package, so I'll hold off any real criticism until it's finalised (we still have the Jeffries passport issue and the, is he or isn't he, over Sammutt, muddying the waters), got to say that I thought we were just about Ok for props, possibly if anything, a tad light if we weren't going to overplay Tom, so I'll be disappointed if there isn't another prop in the offing, either as a newcomer or a re-jigging from within.

I doubt the club would just decide to ship him out to get money

I suspect what happened was

1. His agent said that he wanted to open negotiations on a new contract, for two years, from the end of 2012
2. The club intimated they would be looking for a one year deal at that point
3. Agent has contacts with other SL clubs and puts out feelers
4. Hull show an interest, and make contact with the Bulls
5. Hull negotiate fee with club, and personal terms with player via agent

If it happened like that, then Andy Lynch could quite easily say 'I wasn't looking to leave, in fact I wanted a new contract at Bradford' and be telling the truth. But at the same time, the events played out in a way that meant that the club were left with little option but to sell, to avoid having an out of contract player at the end of next season.

THat's how it seems to be increasingly happening in sport - footballers are rarely allowed to enter into the final year of a contract, for fear of them walking away for no fee. Hence Arsenal deciding to sell Nasri to Man City this Summer. And, of course, agents have a vested interest in promoting these transfers, as they get a decent cut of the fee.

From what I heard he asked for another year but the club declined saying that nobody was getting an extension at the moment. He would've stayed if his contract had been extended to 2013.

I'll be keeping my powder dry on this until we see who his replacement is going to be.

Depends who they are IMO, players like Burgess and Whitehead and other quality youngsters should be negotiated well in advance of the middle of the season that their contracts finish. They should be given long contracts aswell. I reckon about 18 months before their current deal runs out, like Leeds and Hudds do, and tie them up for 4-5 years aswell.

Spot on imo.

Wigan didn't hang around with Tomkins, Hudds didn't with McGilvary etc.

Lynch's replacement has been identified but cant be finalised until the quota issue is sorted.

Hope this doesn't hurt us like the Orford issue did last year

which quota issue? jeffries or sammut. Bit worrying if were basing our recruitment on possibility of sammut getting dispensation unless club have been told something already. If we wait and hope he'll get it then he doesnt we're left scrabbling round for players late in off season when everyones sorted for next season.

This isn't a criticism of the club with regards to selling Lynch as I can see why they've done it and if the right replacement is identified as kingmonkey suggests then I'm in favour. However, why does the club appear so passive in these matters? Where is the 'Hood demands decision from RFL' headline in the RLW? At times we're so meek it's pitiable.