TP and Wello are old and so will inevitably decline, LMS has been about the same the whole time he's been here, Wilkin has had several serious injuries and has had to play 3 positions at the same time for most of the last couple of seasons etc. etc.

Noone's denying we've not got problems - we didn't have a top coach for 4 seasons (with jury still out on Brown) which is always going to take time to turn 'round, and our injury stuation has been consistently horrific for years (something must now be done about this as there must be something endemic in our conditioning causing a great deal of it). But the end of the world stuff is kneejerk and tiresome. We need a half (preferably 2) and a prop and some decent coaching and conditioning - that's it. Hardly a massive crisis....

No arguments from me - Hohaia always looked iffy to me and LeFrank ain't really been the replacement for Graham we needed either. But again: who else (assuming we needed to offload Pryce) could we have had any better at the time? Could you imagine being a member of the Saints board 2 years ago knowing you were about to lose both of your starting halves at the end of the season with only unknown kids available to replace them for an entire year? They had to sign someone and so panicked and signed the only vaguely quality player on the market right then that could play #6. They made a **** decision, but under the circumstances and without the benefit of hindsight I doubt many of us would have made a different one. C'est la vie.

People would have been angry yes but I for one would have understood if the chairman would have simply been honest and said we sold him because he wouldnt sign a long contract and we didnt want to lose him on a free. It's a reality of the post bosman era and effects all the big football clubs so why should we be any different?

The problem with the recruitment and my biggest gripe, is not replacing players with quality when players left. We've gone about 6/7 years without a out and out centre pairing which IMO is shocking!

We failed to try and replace the the likes of gidley, scully, graham, long etc who was massively important to us. I know we could never replace scully, longy and KC with equal or better players but we should have gone for the best we could.

McManus said "we are going with youth" but what he really means is we are doing it cheap and hope we drop lucky. I wouldn't mind if he'd been honest and cane out and told us that we are doing it on the cheap because of the stadium but he didnt, in fact he told us "we will have a team to grace the stadium"

I pretty much agree with Northampton Saints comments re signings etc

I would also add that i think that although Daniel Anderson and Mick Potter were fine coaches, they were from the Brian Smith school of coaching.

This is a school that trumps size and power above speed, agility and footballing brain.

The ultimate result of this has been seen in Saints fans complaints about dour one up rugby, all bash and barge and no pace in the backs. Daniel Anderson escaped much criticism, as the team under him were near invincible. However a look back on websites and you will see pockets of fans bemoaning the spectacle.

Royce was then brought in to change things. I think he was trying to do that, bt for whatever reason the players didnt seem to understand or agree with what he was trying to do. The end result was player power allegedly saw him off.

We now have Brown, and we have seen at Huddersfield that he likes three quarters with pace, he likes to have a half back with a strong kicking game. He likes a creative loose forward. He likes mobile hookers and he also likes a big aggressive pack.
Given time i think Brown will build us a team in the mould that Saints fans desire. Whether he is a coach good enough to bring us trophys however is another matter. His record in Australia was solid rather than inspirational.

The replacement or lack of it with Talau, is not down to being unfortunate.

Whilst it's fair to say we would have been annoyed if Eastmond signed a long term deal with Warrington, he did not sign a long term deal with Saints. It was not so much about keeping Smith or Long, but not telling them to go before signing up Eastmond on a long 4 year deal. If he stuck to 2 years then you need to hedge and keep Smith, Pryce and Eastmond. All 3 could have been accomodated.

Same with Leon he could have been kept. Going for Lance made no sense as a half without any hindsight. Had he been signed as a FB, for an outgoing Wellens then fair enough.

Laffranchi again a good signing but why would we sign him to replace the best prop in the world (arguably). There was the likes of Griffin and Hill I think even Carvell may have been up for grabs at the time. So whilst we could not sign a prop of Grahams ability, we could have bought him in the aggregate.

Perry there is no fault with a quality buy, for the right position but just did not work out, same with Shenton.

If you have ever watched Moneyball, then you could say Saints are guilty of doing a similar thing, we have been looking to sign names, as opposed to buying wins, by going for effective players in the right positions, rather than big names who play in slots that are already covered.

For me, it all started when Scully retired. Near impossible to replace though. IIRC we have not won anything since have we?

I want us to go back to basics and recruit players specifically for certain positions. By that I mean I want two actual wingers playing on the wing.

I want two actual centres playing there. I want 2 out and out halfbacks playing there. I want 3 or 4 no nonsense props playing there. It's hardly rocket science. Even if they aren't world beaters; even if they are merely "solid" in that position, it will be a position where they have trained all their career.

I am fed up of seeing us trying to put a round peg into a dodecahedron hole. Enough trying to do this on the cheap all the whilst ruining kids careers.

I just want to see an honest to god RL team.

fwiw RE: Griffin there was an interview with him a while back (can't remember where) when he said he shook hands on a deal with you guys, then decided to join Leeds at the last minute instead.

From a playing POV, that turned out to be a horrendous decision for him.

From seeing what he did at Hudds I suspect that isnt browns style though. I agree with you though, it's what the goons have done and it's working ok for them at the moment.

Went chasing the money and got shafted. No sympathy for players with that attitude.

Don't really see Saints troubling the silverware for quite a while to be honest.

What has that got to do with ANYTHING here?

Please, if you are going to troll then at least be amusing.

Saying we should of kept Leon is all well and good,but given his injury record of his last two years it was something of a gamble for us to keep a high earner who may or may not play.Again its something we are judging with hindsight,if we had of kept him and he got injured then people would of been lambasting the board for resigning him.Also while he is a good player is isnt a creative organising player and as was often posted on here and other sites,he would often be invisible in games.

Gidley: =#FF0000[ureplaced[/u with the current first choice GB #3
Scully: irreplaceable, but still =#FF0000[ureplaced[/u by a GB SR/#13
Graham: =#FF0000[ureplaced[/u with an Aussie international prop.
Long: =#FF0000[ureplaced[/u with the best and most exciting young #7 talent in the country.

etc., etc., et-****ing-cetra...

We replaced Graham with a second row and who did we replace Scully with?

You seem to forget at a whim we didnt bother replacing Talau , If we hadn't bothered replacing Gidley we;d have gone from 1 centre to bloody none so we had to do that. Long , well we did have a replacement , in fact we grew several but we f****d up with all of them to some degree or another.

Having coaches who only took the position because nothing else was available in their own country doesn't help.

Guy by the name of Wilkin? You know: GB player?

Failing him, who do you think we should have signed to replace Sculthorpe with exactly instead? He is irreplaceable on a 1-for-1 basis. Many top-priced quality players have come into the team to play #11, #12, #6 or #13 instead since his departure as well besides Wilkin. Do these not count as "replacements" do you think?



Talau was past it and we had a quality proven centre replacement in the squad already in Gilmour - I don't know whether you've noticed but top centres don't exactly grow on trees 'round these parts these days. Most top SL teams have had to rely on SRs to fill in at #3 or #4 over the last 5 years or so and we were in a darn sight better position than they've been by having Gilmour to call on. Have Leeds and Wigan shown a lack of "ambition" and a desire to simply cut costs at all costs by having relied on SRs playing centre in their GF wins do you think?

And again - who do you think we should have signed at the time instead to play #4 who was available and better than Gilmour? Hmmmm?



The argument isn't did we sign the [iright[/i players to replace those that left every time, or that contracts have been handled as well as they could have been... Eastmond was a **** up and noone would deny otherwise. Hohaia is a disaster in the position we signed him for. LeFrank is not the dominating presence up front Jammer was. The argument that some numpties are making though is that the board has shown a complete lack of "ambition", only been interested in saving money and has not even tried to attempt to replace any players that have left - this is a patent and utter demonstrable nonsense. At every stage we have signed (in the board's opinion) the best possible available replacement for everyone that has left and on top dollar. Eastmond, LeFrank and Hohaia were all signed on top dollar, just as much as the players they were replacing were on. We have not signed cheap makeweights and relied on unprepared youth teamers to fill all the holes as the lunatic fringe are suggesting.

I disagree. Talau could and should have been replaced. Moving Gilly out to centre made the pack lighter and reduced our threat out wide and contributed to the slow down in the backs.

There were plenty of centres who we could have opted for from the UK or the NRL. Back when Talau left there was not the same gulf in wages that there is now. In fact we may have been ahead at that point. Who could we have signed, well that so far back now, I'd be hard pushed to find who was exactly off contract at that point.

But I like a challenge so how about this one Matt King.

Spot on. Call it cost cutting or call it poor squad management the fact was we let our only left centre go and then wedged a second row in there. (read John Monie's book)

Also you can hardly say Wilkin was a replacement for Scully as he was already at the club and had been for some time. Saints have had a downward spiral squad wise for a number of years , its worse for us because we were so damned good. We have excuses now , Union is richer, NRL is richer, the pound is weaker but we didnt a few years back

The same scenario is playing out at Wigan now but there thick fans are too stupid to see it. Although much better than our 6 & 7 they have replaced Finch and Lulu with inferior players (who they paid fee's for !), Mossop and Hock are off and being replaced with an old welsh bloke. Tomkins will be next and despite all the crap spouted by Rogues and others they have no replacement , whoever they put at 1 will be a massive downgrade although I'm sure Pollard will sugar coat it, hold a big press conference and tell everyone it's not really a bad thing for Wigan or English RL in general and that he'll be back when he's ready for the knackers yard.

Our survey says... "Ek, errrrkkkkk!!!" Oh, bad luck....



King signed for Wire a year before Talau left (and when Willie was still committed under another 12 months' contract) and so couldn't have happened without a huge transfer fee/payoff (which we can't pay) to someone at some point. And King would have been on [isubstantially[/i more dosh than Willie ever was which would have meant either something else in the squad needed to give or we needed to find Wire's sugar daddy and "creative" accountancy. Nice try though



FWIW I remember being more than a little concerned at the non-arrival of a direct replacement for Willie at the time, but I also remember not being able to think of any suitable replacements available on the market at the time either. The player pool in SL is small and shrinking daily and it's inevitable that teams that can't pay big transfer fees will have to go the odd season with fill-ins while waiting for suitable replacements for various positions to show up as free agents every now and then, as we did then until Sia became available, or as we are now having to with a #7.

[iBecause there are no replacements on the market any better!!!![/i Here we go with that stupid, clueless argument again... "Saints have ****ed up and are on the decline because we used to have Long and Scully, now we have Wilkin and Hohaia... Wigan have ****ed up and are on the decline because they used to have Lulu and Finch, now they have Green and Smith"... FFS!!! The talent pool in our game is shrinking at an alarming rate... The Longs and Sculthorpes of old are no longer available to any of us... The Lulus and Finches are no longer available even. Clubs have to sign the best available replacements for those players when they go, and those best available players are unfortunately Greens and Hohaias now.... That isn't a sign of decline in those clubs - it is a sign of the decline in our [ientire game[/i...

Fair enough with the Talau - King. Like I said a long time ago and I was at work so doing a bit of guess work.

But with the full internet to my disposal.

Ryan atkins was available a year later who we passed on.
Chev Walker the same..
There were several make shift centre's after 2008.

I can't remember them all but not to replace Talau until (2013) is pretty poor. I've put 2013 in brackets as I've been impressed with Percival, but it's a bit early to jump to conclusions yet.

A fee was paid for Atkins so that ruled us out of the reckoning. Walker isn't what you'd really call "Saints quality" - I'd rather have had Gilmour any day. And it's also supreme arrogance to assume that we should be signing any and every quality player that ever comes onto the market anyway. Every other top SL club is rabidly after any half-way decent centre that ever becomes available due to the appallingly limited selection of same - what divine right do we have to expect to beat everyone else to them every time? We won a fevered bidding war for Shenton - we can't win all of them...