You should be grateful that we couldn't afford to keep him.
Its great that the kids doing well,but when wakey fans come on here trying to rub It In that wev'e somehow dropped a bolock expect an answer.

As the OP on this thread I'm telling you that my intention wasn't to rub it in or suggest you've dropped a bolock!

I'm fairly sure that a number of Sts fans ave watched Johnson progress and then seen him leave, some of them might like to know that he's done good elsewhere and actually be proud that a Sts junior is cutting it in the top division.

Take the chip off your shoulder!

Nobody has a chip on their shoulder, he was not deemed good enough to be offered a new contract so was let go, Saints believe that other players are better. Few Saints fans think they were incorrect at this point, and some of your compadres appear not to be able to accept that.

You may have just been reporting on his progress, fine, but other Wakey fans aren't.

how many games for you did he play? i'm sure i saw him playing for you at wigan on sky

Ask John Kear if he'll take Ashurst for free

I'll drop him off

You first
Thanks for your wonderful insight then.

I'm not sure that's true, bearing in mind the Chairman's recent veiled comments concerning letting players go in order to finance our beloved Kyle Eastmond. Paul only played three times at first grade level, once for all of about three minutes at Wigan when Keiron briefly went off injured. He's hardly had serious game time in Superleague prior to going to Wakey.

Whatever the reason for him and other players leaving last season (and there were quite a few, young and older), I am glad that he is doing well at Wakey and I hope he continues to impress.

Everyone just wind your necks in, will you.

The OP wanted to let us know how well one of youngsters is doing, which I think we're all pleased to hear.
FTV's comment was mearly constructed to stop the knee jerk reaction that sometimes occurs in these situation, that we've made a massive blunder. His delivery may have been blunt, but you're on the Saints board, so we're alowed to big ourselves up a bit and, ateotd, is factually correct.

Well done PJ, keep up the good work.

Thanks for that....

My point proved!

Wow your good!!

Just watched the SL show on the iPlayer - > Smashing run from him to set up Roby's try.

hmmmmmmm

The fact that he got 3 games when the younger Ashurst, McGennis and Dixon all played far more at second row and Emmitt got more game time at prop [ishould[/i tell you all you need to know.

Maybe. But in previous seasons other players have had little game time but gone on to have more in the next season. Emmitt was let go also, along with Hargreaves. We let quite a few players go at the end of last season. All I was suggesting, as a possible alternative, was that maybe the club's reasons for letting so many go were not necessarily directly related to their potential at first grade.

Those players have generally been younger than 23 at the time though, he'd been surpassed in his career progression by others.

Age isn't everything, you know. Some people develop later than others. And for a prop, 23 is still young, surely?

I thought McGennis was good last night. Played a lot of minutes at prop and performed admirably.

It is, which is why I wouldn't write him off as finished as a player, but when you've got younger players performing better than you, they are going to be offered contracts first, and in these salary cap times with an U20's rather than a reserves, it means you generally get let go.

And I didn't think his performance last night against our much weakened pack did your argument much good either.

He worked hard last night but got hammered everytime he had the ball.

Letting him go won't come back to bite us on the bum.

And once again, this thread wasn't intended to analyse Sts decision to let him go!

He's a Sts product and he's been great for Wakefield so far this year!

He played last night in a front row that was missing Korkidas, had Paul King returning after months being out, Higgins in only his 2nd game after stepping up from Championship rugby and Amor who is on loan, doing well but is also stepping up from U20s at Leeds.

Had Johnson been playing for Sts and McGennis for Wakefield their roles and performances would likely be reversed!

You've got some great young players coming through in all positions and the club is obviously doing something right in terms of recruiting and developing junior talent.

We're grateful that Johnson became surplus at Sts because when gambling on a young player the one thing you can count on from some clubs is that their juniors are well coached in the fundamentals of the game and have the correct attitude, this seems to be true of Sts.

Good luck for the rest of your season barring when we next meet.

True.


To be honest, I wasn't taking any notice of Wakey players last night. I was too busy watching our own to see whether we'd taken heed of Royce's challenge to focus for the full 80 minutes! I decided that we had.

To be fair to PJ, he's obviously doing alright on the whole and when you look at him, he's still pretty small for a prop. Given that, as he gets older and puts on weight, he'll probably turn into a fair contender.