Agreed. Should have parted company with Talanoa and Mini. Great servants but its time to move on.

I feel like its 2007 all over again were we gradually dismantled a GF team and replaced them with average players.

Slightly o/t but who's stepped into Motu's shoes now that Gareth has moved over? Recruitment from now until this time next year is going to be critical for the future of the club and the aspirations of us as supporters!

james clark?

Agreed as good as Mini, Sika & Talanoa have been for us we needed to look at replacing rather than re signing them. All 3 take up quota spots and i'm sure we could have made improvements in the squad by replacing them. I can understand keeping one of Mini or Manu as replacing both at once would have been a hard task. The re signing of Washy, Mini & Manu for me seems like lazy recruitment.

All 3 are now going to have to hit the ground running from the off to warrant the extensions. Hopefully they will all have decent injury free runs too as do feel that cost us massively particularly with both Mini & Manu playing injured which just compounded things.

Do think with Sneyd, Kelly, Connor, Houghton, Taylor & Westerman fully fit with less injury time to Paea, Manu & Mini we will still be genuine contenders, however we have to be able to find a different plan that will work if we can't just play the power game.

Not having a dig here,

Given the squad we have and that we are lead to understand that there was little cap left to play with unless players left, and if we had the money availalbe to afford to pay beyond £175k for a Marque player, who would you release and who would you sign?

I agree . Look at other Club’s recruitment for 2019. The Club have rested on their laurels after the Cup success.
A long hard season awaits us .

From The HDM.

"We are going to move some players out and bring some new ones in and completely refresh the squad. We will move players on who we feel have let the club down over the past two months.
Obviously some of those players have contracts and if needs be and they don’t want to go we will send them to play dual registration at Doncaster and they can stay there. We’ll then sign three or four players who take us into a new financial level"

Following AP's rant I was expecting some significant changes.

Disappointed.

It seems no coincidence that the teams making decent signings have Australian Coaches.

Absolute Bulls**t from Pearson.
It was like his “There are 4 top SL halfbacks, and we will sign 2 of them” quote!!

Wouldn’t surprise me if we offload one of our big earners to strengthen the squad in other areas.

Which big earners are under threat?

Sneyd?? To Wigan??

They need a 7, and a goalkicker

Griffin is one Pearson wants out

There’s a rumour regards sneyd going there , looked like griffin was going to after the wire game . Personally I’d offload one of the overseas players if possible , talanoa mini paea. As much as I don’t think Connor is a half back , maybe we may look we’re we are overloaded in positions , and think we have 3 good half’s and 3 good centres and balance the squad out .

Two missed opportunities signing for our ter neighbours, who could well leapfrog us this season. Leeds with a real coup too.

I said months ago that Radford had made a huge mistake in not strengthening the squad for 2019 with one or two quality players.
The momentum we had gained from two challenge cup victories has been lost and this current squad is not good enough for a top four challenge.
I can see the misplaced loyalty shown to one or two overseas players and Washbrook costing Radford his job after a tough start to the season.

Recruitment is another advantage of having an Aussie coach.
Our next coach will be Australian

Most teams have strengthened their starting 17 . Have we ?

Really needs to be . We seem to have no one at the Club who can attract a top overseas player. That all seem to have been lost when Motu Tony left.

He told you that did he?

It looks to me like the appointment of ellis to replace motu is what has landed us in the mess we're in squad wise. We really haven't properly assessed the squad strength at all and ended up with basically 17 first choice players and a load of average back ups. There is no real competition for places and with a relatively small number of injuries we'll be in the same boat as last year. Having an inexperienced football manager and a chief exec who isn't from a rugby background has really got us in the mire IMO.

As I've said plenty of times before, the lack of our own ground really leaves financially us miles behind those clubs that do. wire, leeds and saints all investing in marquee players which I can't see us ever doing unless a big TV deal comes along and increases revenue significantly but we won;t be in any better position as all clubs will have the extra spending power

I think the club got amazingly luck with motu's recruitment in 2016 and 2017 which was pretty amazing when you look back at it. Maybe some of the contracts were backloaded which could be causing us problems now but our lack of real quality younger players coming through also makes things worse.

lot of doom and gloom around as usual, think if we have a bit of luck on the injury front it can be a top 4 for us, lots back from injury and a good smattering of young uns, we have signed few good squad players and I think dawson could be a good signing for us,

Are you saying that the players we signed were just lucky that they brought success to our club?

No, it's quite clear what I'm saying and it's obvious that I'm not saying what you've posted at all, in fact I don;t even know what you're trying to infer