Rumours that Wigan are sniffing around Larne Patrick at Huddersfield, is he a player we should be looking at or is he a player who has not lived up to his potential, still good player and someone who could bolster the front row ? Guess Weegan are cash up and Gawry would be reluctant to splash the cash if he was interested ?

A signing that shows ambition. Would probably rule us out.

patrick signed up till 2016 at giants, would take a big lump sum from wigan.

Bateman was the one Wigan signed that we should have

If Partrick is available id sign him ,Sla re-batemen we dont need anymore BR's.

I personally would not sign Patrick - he looked a great prospect three years ago he hasn't improved since then.

Its not about quantity its about quality - our back row options:

Clarkson - a good player but not in a team with ambitions at winning trophies
Ablett - quality the best we have
Ward - Potentially a very good player but how will recover from the injuries
Achurch - Not convinced looks more a prop than anything
JJB - Been a great player but now in decline - possibly a move to prop would be his best option
Delanney - very good player but injury prone
Foster - still young

Given that one of JJB and Delanney will be injured some of the time, Foster needs to develop and Ward's fitness must be a risk then Bateman should have been a target if only to create competition for places. Wigan with O'Loughlin, Hansen and Farrell have a stronger back row than us yet they have deemed it worth signing Bateman and Clubb.

Time will tell who has got it right.

Would be a good signing for us but we won't pay out for a transfer fee so that's him out of the running. I still feel Carvell would do a job for us and will take the pressure off our front row. Yes I know he is getting on a bit but on the basis we won't buy anyone decent and we don't have strength in depth he would be my choice. I would also look to play Hardaker at SO with Sinfield at SH . Burrow or McGuire on the bench Ward or Sutcliffe or Ablett at LF.

Hansen has gone.

Personally think you are over rating Bateman. Time will tell, and he now as the spring board to show any talents. But IMO he will never be as good as Farrell there already.

never really saw what people saw in bateman myself

Regarding larne patrick and bateman and to a certain extent lunt they are players who are not the finished product.
It's up to the coaching staff at any club to bring this players on and improve them to the full potential .
I think the jury is still out on our coaching staffs ability to bring players on.
Failing that you buy the finished product as in buderous and pay top money.
You pays your money and make your choice.

how very insightful of you sal to predict this


so are you intimating that only one out of either jjb or delaney will be injured "some of the time" out of our squad and that we should have signed bateman on that basis ?

isn't it also a possibility in your opinion that some of our other squad players may also be injured "some of the time" too?

imo we are very well off for back row forwards and can easily cover most eventualities in these positions within our current squad and i also believe that bateman,despite having the potential to be a great player, would have been almost a luxury signing for us in a salary capped sport

I would hope that our clubs next investment would be in the prop forward position,i would personally be interested in bringing nick scruton back to the club next season when he is out of contract < i believe? >



i can't believe that someone as intelligent and up to date with all things rugby league that you actually managed to miss the great dr kockrash's clubs press announcement that they had signed hansen?

i reckon that bateman is hansen's eventual replacement and that clubb will be primarilly a front row player eventually rather than a backrower

Don't get the fuss over Clubb. Gone backwards at a rate of knots since he got into a couple of England squads. Unless he's cheap, I can't see why someone like Wigan would want him over the likes of Jack Hughes who can also cover back row and centre.

Also on the Injury issue it could be pointed out that O'Loughlin made fewer SL appearances last year than either JJB or Delaney with his own injury problems.

So that just leaves Liam Farrell now lol

You are entitled to your opinion - you are very defensive to any criticism of JJB so any post of yours needs to bear that in mind. JJB has been a great player for Leeds, he is 32 will be 33 before the end of the season - even someone as myopic as you has to accept his best day are behind him. In the last two seasons he has missed 13 games in 2012 and 8 games in 2013 so would you not suggest he now has a legacy of injury? You obviously struggled to read my post - Ward is another who I suggested could also be an injury doubt. We also have three props who are even older than JJB so the potential for injury issues are significant. If the props do get injured then the back row will have to cover then what? We end up with very unfit senior players taking the field in must win games.

Really high quality young players seldom come on the market - when they do Leeds should be interested, especially when their existing players are reaching the end of the career.

I would consider Briscoe much more of a luxury than Bateman would have been, we already had a great back line. Especially when you consider the relative cost of each player.

They didn't seem to have many issues last season - remind me how many trophies did they win and how many did Leeds win?

I agree - hopefully they can get him fit - he looked well over weight last season.

Playing at Bradford over the past two season cannot have been easy - especially for a young emerging player.

That wasn't the argument in question though.

You pointed out how Leeds could do with Bateman after listing the injury issues with some of our backrowers but then forgot to mention that Wigan had their own issues there with O'Loughlin and implied that Bateman and Clubb were there to be backup to the starting trio of Hansen (who has now departed), Farrell and O'Loughlin (actually missed more games than JJB & Delaney).

Regarding the shifting of goalposts quote above though, they did have issues there last year when O'Loughlin was absent. Their form without him in the 2nd half of the season was for the most part pretty poor and Wane felt he had to make the gamble to play him in both finals even though he was a big injury risk instead of going for safer fitter options who played in his absence (something McDermott got stick for btw).

Sal-re our BR you have also over-looked the emergance of Minchella and the potential Josh walters has shown playing there.

Wane has stated that he made mistakes in 2012 when his team was goosed by the time the playoffs came. Perhaps they actually made a decision to rest up in the second half of the year. Or maybe they were just lucky that they came good when it real mattered i.e. when the trophies were being handed out.

On O'Loughlin Wane knew when he played him the chances of him playing a major part in the games were strong and so it proved. McDermott on the other hand played the likes of JJB - knowing they were seriously injured - who simply didn't make any tangible contribution.

The point here is you either think Bateman would be a good addition given the state of the Leeds squad - I do, you probably don't - that's the point of the board like this.

sal you are also far too quick to write certain selective players off that clearly suit your agenda against them are you not?

did you not also write jp off and say that he was finished in 2011 and that he shouldn't have been given a new contract?

whilst on the subject of injury prone players, your own personal favorite player at the club has probably missed more games in recent seasons through injury, but you don't seem to have any issues there have you?

imo his injuries are far more detrimental to both his and his teams performances due to their nature than any sustained recently by either jjb or delaney, he could also be restricting the pathway of sutcliffe if selected most weeks

i hope that both jjb and delaney prove you wrong this season as i believe that both are still good enough to warrant starting spots each week and especially when the big games come around

at present i am far more concerned about your favorite players fitness worries than any other player at the club

I completely agree with you - if McGuire doesn't improve on what he delivered in 2013 then he doesn't deserve his place in the side. The same goes for a number of the senior players and I include JJB, the captain, Kylie and Kirke in that. The question re. Sutcliffe is who is holding him back? Sutcliffe is a stand off not a scrum half who is playing stand off?

We seen in the cricket what happens when you rely on senior players too much, when the bar is raised they can no longer increase their performance levels to compensate.

Going into 2014 Leeds will have potentially 8 players the wrong side of thirty perhaps the club should be considering how to lessen the workload on these great servants of the club?

sinfield stands at 6 from scrums admittedly but he is not the player that will be stopping sutty from playing each week,we both know who will be though

What we both know is a number of younger players will not get the game time they should because older players will get selected on reputation before them regardless of how well they are playing - we both know which players we are talking about!!

Sutcliffe wants to the playmaker - who is the playmaker in the Leeds side? as you said we both know which player will be holding Sutcliffe back.

I agree that Sutcliffe should be given more responsibility over the coming season, however, to blame Sinfield for potentially holding him back is letting your obvious dislike of Sinfield cloud your view. Sutcliffe showed on Boxing Day he is not yet ready to be the main playmaker for Leeds. At the moment he needs to be playing as second fiddle to someone to allow him to get the necessary experience to take over this role sometime down the line. This means leaving Sinfield doing the job he has been doing successfully for so long and Sutcliffe taking playing time from McGuire and Burrow as the secondary playmaker.