People talk about us not being a 'big' club. One thing a 'big' club should never do is pay overs for any player. That's what desperate teams do. From all accounts we made Martin an offer, which he refused. We offered more and he refused again. The club then simply announced that he'll be leaving as a result of not taking up the revised offer.

That is the sort of discipline we'll need to revamp the squad. Work out what players are worth, and offer no more. It doesn't take many players being paid even small overs and you'll start having to make cuts elsewhere.

We probably had to do that to rebuild post Agar. Some of our players must be on contracts paying higher than their open market value as a result. The fact we're at or near the cap with a squad barely capable of scraping into the 6 tells you everything you need to know. Compare our 1-17 to Wigan, Sts or even KR and its clear we've got ourselves into a mess again.

I'd like to keep Martin, mainly for his goalkicking. But if we want to upsize our pack we need cap space, and most likely quota spots. We're ridiculously overloaded in the backs on quota, for frankly not a great return. Hopefully as some of the younger backs force their way into the team we'll be able to rebalance. But there's no question we've got into a mess, because our squad just isn't good enough yet.

Isn't that why they've released Matt Parcell?

For me, it's a shame if he goes, but certainly not devastating.
He's been a solid, not spectacular back row.
He'll be 32, so we should not be throwing money at him.
If he's settled in Leeds, he can only be going for big bucks (no matter what Rovers fans say).
The goalkicking will be the biggest miss undoubtedly. That will need replacing.
But the biggest issue will be if the quota change comes in next year and he wouldn't have been a quota spot.
That would be a big shame.
If not, it's not such a massive blow.
Good luck to him.
Once a rhino, alwatys a rhino...

They're still over the Quota even with him going IIRC

Cheers.

Agree with all this good post.

Do you not realise he has been our best player all season

not particularly a high bar though is it.....

How many MoMs has he had? One or two?

I wouldn't say best, I'd say most consistent. How much would you pay him to keep him, relative to other players in the squad?

I agree but if we are going to get better we need to keep our best players and replace the dross with even better players and of course improve the coaching at senior and junior levels which is shocking and has been for years

Think we just have to roll with it sometimes, even if we developed a cracking youth talent, they are always going to get tapped up by NRL and we've lost several fantastic players over there in the past even.

I'll repeat (!) we can't keep players too far past their market value. Sometimes someone else will value them higher than we can, and that doesn't mean the sky is falling down or that the club is rubbish. It sounds like Leeds have made a decent effort to retain Martin, but at this stage in his career you can't fault him for going to a higher bidder - especially as we've been floundering for years and the crowd can be fickle AF here.

martin, kicking aside, is solid,reliable and consistent. I wouldn't. describe him as top class. I'd love to keep him but time to move on

Taddlers this is twice we have agreed this year what is going on?

simple my old fruit. just agree with me and we'll go far

I’m so glad you didn’t say all the way.

“What would Tads do?” is my new life mantra.

trust me, that is the worst thing you could do

Parcel imo best Leeds hooker since buderis massive mistake letting him go tried Aton he left the rest all average.
Why are we letting our players go to places like HKR no disrespect but why?

we aren't letting him go.
he's out of contract and wants to go

Maybe Martin wants to go because he sees more potential to achieve success with a club that appears to have better direction of where it wants to go on the field

There's got to be an element of that hasn’t there? Funnily enough, if Arthur stays and Blease is ruthless and ambitious I think we can turn it around pretty quickly. Big "ifs" though.

"Such as HKR"...take your rose tinted glasses off

Well thats a performance to soften the blow, hopeless today

He’s an excellent kicker and usually very consistent, but he isn’t a game breaking player and he has very little impact at the line. He’s chunky and quite strong but he is part of our problem of a soft pack IMO.

I was ambivalent about him going or staying but now he has made a decision we need to take the opportunity with the cap and quota.

Not too bothered about anyone leaving tbh. We need complete rebuild imho….

Edited for accuracy