I think we should cut our losses and look elsewhere.
That's only if the right quality is available or if we can entice a club into selling i.e Mcarthy-scarsbrook at quinns.

wait while xmas

Why are you planning on a special gift snowie?

way the bulls are trying to offload tupou, we should go looking at s.burgess save them wage bills that way

I don't think they'd risk selling him mate there'd be a riot at the grattan land fill if their top lad was sold to us!!

nar another boxing day raid

The fact he's signed a 3 year deal at the Dogs might help make that decision

With a release option for 2010 should an appeal prove successful!!
Read the whole article

Its late and I couldnt be d



Anyway at least 1 of my teams will have him this year.

I think this puts a different slant on the whole new signing thing. I'm not sure what the answer is really. I guess its dependant on the appeal of the visa, and when that is. The release for 2010 sounds promising, but could be more damaging as it puts us in a wait situation. You could argue now that we are two top players down on the slaary cap, and that we should go for someone if they are of the right calibre. A second row comfortable in the is what would fit the bill, but they'd neeed to be of the right calibre. The current team can cope at the moment, but with a couple of long term injuries our depth may not hold

I don't think we desperately need anyone at this point. Presumably this frees up more space under the cap, so if the right player becomes available for the right price, it would be foolish to rule out the possibility of further signings. But it would have to be somebody who would add significant value to the squad, not just a signing for signing's sake, and I don't see many of those being around during the season.

As G1 posted the other day lets go out and break the bank and try to sign Sam Burgess?

I'm not even sure Eastwood would want to come now, just cut our losses and move on. Be interested to know if Bluey still thought a SR was still a priority.

From the article it would seem that he does, but who knows??

Lets not spend for the sake of spending.

If there is cap room this year, use it to extend some deals of the players we want to keep by front loading some extended contracts.

That should be in the budget already without having to use Eastwood monies.

We should have unexpected spare 2009 money in budget?

There is no need to rush out and buy. We are in a place where for 75% of SL matches our current squad will do, even with injuries. What I worry about is that we get injuries when coming up against tough opposition, eg Saints, Hull, Wigan. We dealt ok with Wigan, with a reduced team, but we couldn't expect to do it every week. With good rotation of squad, using fringe players as much as possible I could see us surviving, and we will lose the odd game here and there, whether we use this money or not. We just need to make sure that we make the right decision long and short term

No I don't mean that.Monies should already be allocated for future contact negotiations.

Maybe, just maybe, squad depth could be provided from players within our junior ranks.

It's a crazy policy and one never likely to serve us well but what the heck.

They would, although we're unlikely to always be able to keep everyone we want.
What I suggested was that we use some of the spare cap space we found this year, to front load some extended contracts - so the player still gets the same contract value over x years, but we have saved cap space in later years by using our spare 2009 space to front load contracts.

I wonder why you post such rubbish at times.

Got you now that makes sence.

You'll win nothing with kids.

Regards

Alan Hansen

Before the season started it was questioned that we would be short at prop. And indeed if say Peacock picked up a 5/6 week injury we are incredibly short. It was suggested that Eastwood would cover that role.

Well we dont have him for this year now. Is the prop situation still valid?

Many question the centre situation, arguments for arguments against.

Nobody is a feckkkwit for questioning the need to possibly sign someone for squad strength. Just the same I would expect that if we hit an inury situation of mid to long term injuries for key personell, people would not call others feckkkwits for saying we do not need anyone.

At the moment the only time we have certain answers we are short is if we hit an injury problem. Hopefully that will not happen.