The was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes at Salford.

What right now, Wellens by a snip. You would just have to tell him Ben Thaler is standing at the end and he is going to give a try without going to the screen.

In the 80's Maggie by a distance.

Is Moon quota? Then he wasn't an option and it really isn't worth discussing as a comparison.

You don't think that stops Sad-end moaning though do you?

You are so quick to hide behind quotas and your mantra of 'there's no one available, wah, wah, wah', when the truth is that players of great quality change clubs every year. Players can also leave, if you put a man in a position where you tell him he's not wanted, he'll more often than not choose to fly home.

The likes of Hardaker, Eden, Broughton, Dixon, Moon, Dureau, Hill, Ratchford and Taylor could all be playing for Saints. It's the club's fault it's recruitment has been so awful.

Imagine:

1 - Hardaker
2 - Broughton
3 - Moon
4 - Ratchford
5 - Dixon
6 - Gaskell
7 - Dureau
8 - Hill
9 - Roby
10 - Puletua
11 - Manu
12 - Soliola
13 - Laffranchi

Pace and individual threat in the backs, creativity and a superb kicking game in the halves, and Hill added to our pack. We'd clean up. None of the above names were out of our reach in terms of signings either, it's just our squad development is done by an investment banker who doesn't have the faintest idea of how to run the on field side of a professional rugby league team.

Although Eamon has worked wonders to stabilise the club's finances and build the stadium, he's also destroyed any chance we had of winning a trophy. It's time for him to step back from the coal face and let someone else have a go, give them the purse strings to make the side successful again and show some ambition again.

Looks a reasonably good team. You wouldn't get that under the cap though, unless of course they are the only 13 players you want us to have!

That team would have to score 30 plus points a game, because defensively it would be great to play against. The more I read of your posts the more I am convinced you are a top class wind up merchant, either that or you know nowt about Rugby League.

Most teams would struggle so badly for field position against that pack and those halves that they wouldn't get chance to even test the defensive line out and even then I don't see any major defensive liabilities in that lineup.

I doubt it. No matter how light on her cloven hooves she was, she wouldn't have won because I'd have dashed out of the crowd and clotheslined the evil, vindictive cow.

You sound like Ed Milliband, ignoring the fact McManus is the most successful chairmen in the superleague era for winning trophies and has made the greatest achievement of securing the future of rugby league in the town.
Unless you have only supported Saints since 2009 then you are totally correct.

It's called bi-polar RLitis bud. Everything it either brilliant or . There is no inbetween. The doctor prescribes reality as its treatment.

There's four or five on the 1 - 7 positions.

Nonsense.

Saddened is on my new Troll Listing, He doesn,t even know that he has selected Dureau who has one of the worse defensive records in superleague around top 5 for missed tackles.

Missed tackles for a scrum half? Who cares? He could do a Longy and defend on the wing.

Dureau isn't as good as you make him out to be, albeit he's an improvement on what we've got (no half backs).

One thing is for sure, Leed's 1-5 are vastly superior to any other in the league.

Potentially, but I think there are a few if's and buts in there.
Hardacre - wait and see
BJB - not sure personally
Moon - could be a top signing
Watkins - good strike centre but not a wingers centre for me and still questions about his defense.
Hall - top class finisher.

One thing they do have there is loads of pace.

I, too, don't see the 'love in' for BJB.

Got bags of pace, but from when I've seen him play he is seems a bit average; albeit bags of pace, but he doesn't strike me as someone who will be a top draw player. I remember him in the GF against us in 2011 and he had a nightmare.

Hardaker and Watkins are the ones that stand out for me (obv Hall does too...) as they have massive potential to be top internationals.

Moon is one that I'm unsure about, not re: ability, but he seems like an intriguing character. He was 'homesick' (whether that was actually the case, who knows?!), but why is he not playing in the NRL? The lad is 24yrs old (?) yet can't get a team down under? Why is that? No question of how well he played last season at Salford, but surely a player of his standard [ishould [/ibe playing in the NRL.

From what I remember Moon came through as a youngster at Brisbane, with Hodges and Tate in front of him? He then moved to New Zealand Warriors and fell out of favour with them as he had a couple of injuries, then pulled out of a couple of games late on because his child was ill, so never established himself. He got dropped to the reserves, said he was looking to leave and ended up at Salford.

...and of course, given that we are the only club in the entirety of superleague who ever wants/needs to sign any players we could and should have easily signed [ievery single one of those players[/i each time they came on the market with no competition at all from anyone else for any of them, right? And they'd all have happily signed for buttons so we could have kept them all under the salary cap. And naturally, the fact that most of those players came with signing fees attached would have posed no barrier =#FF0000at all to a business losing [i3 million quid [/i(50% of it's entire turnover) in 2 years at the time either. Obvious when you think about it...

Let's face facts matey: you're either an increasingly dull windup artist or just a completely clueless, angry loon stuck in a fantasy existence and looking to take out the frustrations of your miserable life on anyone that'll sit and listen. I think you need a new hobby - maybe macrame? At least SaintsFan manages to be entertaining on occasion, even if completely unintentionally...

Without McManus this club would have disappeared 3 or 4 times over in the last decade. The fact that we are now financially stable (maybe even profit-making) with a brand-new stadium of our own, right in the middle of the worst recession in anyone's living memory, are still competing right at the very top of the league every year, have a squad to match anyone else's and have as good a chance in the trophy shakeup next season as any of our rivals is utterly remarkable frankly. You need to have most of your screws completely missing never mind loose to even begin to criticise the way he's running this great club of ours.

Your rant falls down dramatically, squire, when you think we have spent the same money and the same signing on fees, just on the players we have now instead. McManus went on a world tour, employed four consultants and signed Lance Hohaia. He did the same with Josh Perry. We outbid Hull for Turner and Manu. Bar Manu, the problem is just we've been targeting the wrong players. Recruiting Hohaia was a monumental mistake, as was retaining Meli, Gardner and Wellens so many times. We've not done well with the recruitment and retention decisions over the last 6/7 years, surely you can see that?

My 'team' was an example to show the suggestion that there are no good players about is wrong. Granted, we wouldn't have been likely to sign all of them if we'd entered the market for them at precisely the same point the likes of Leeds, Warrington etc did and then engaged in a bidding war. But the quality of those players and the fact that none are out of the reach of Saints as potential signings shows what could have been achieved.

Now that is at least a reasoned arguement. Which beats the usual. I agree there are times when we have recruited badly, however I would not say all are bad. My problem is people use hindsight far too much to critise, where actually had they been in the position at the time without the ability of forethought, they would most likely have made the same choice.

So I'll give you Lance - I doubt many would agree that he was the right man for the job advertised. (Although as a FB, but anyway)

Perry - I can't say that this was bad recruitment, quite frankly if we had not picked him up when we did, you yourself would have been saying there go Saints passing over a SOO player, look at who we are missing out on. I would also say Shenton would fall into this catergory. A good signing at the time they where signed. Whether it works out after that is not down to recruitment.

Meli, Wellens and Gardner are retention - I'll agree on Meli and Gardner, although I can see the arguement people have with Meli. With Wellens I'm more flexible. I do think others should be given games to see how they go, but I would not have got rid of Wellens the way you would suggest. If those who came in could take the shirt off him, then fine, but you don't bin a quality FB, on the hope that someone better might be around. The irony now is that we have a quality FB, but playing half.

The big question for me is Centre, Willi Talau we seamed to go through years of just filling in for him, in that senario we did get rid of a quality player in the hope that someone else would just turn up, they did not.

My point is you have to be fair about these things, I would expect a drop off in recruitment whilst funding the stadium and I did not expect us to be paying out fees for players whilst the club is incuring huge losses in the region of Millions.

The problem is that a few fans on here won,t accept that and have been spoiled by the extended period of success over the first 10 years of superleague.
McManus already had the vision that the quality of player was going to diminish or become less available and made a move to develop within the club.
It was only 3 seasons ago that we had a promishing development of a new no 1, 6 and 7 to take us into the new decade, unfortunately we have Lomax playing out of postion, Wheeler injury ravaged, Eastmond influenced out of the game. These would have been a pretty good platform for future success, instead we have progressed into yet another season of transition.
Our biggest setback was 2011, low fan attendance, low income streams with increasing expenditure on the new stadium. As already mentioned this is not a good indicator to go out and spend beyond your means on players.