Hull paid a big fee for lynch so he was a no go.

Hill in hindsight would have been perfect but nobody knows how a young prop coming from a lower league will adapt to super league.

Jason king or kite would have been ideal, both are top quality props and both offer good leadership.

They may not be cheating per se, but anyone looking at the depth and quality of Warrington's squad and the seemingly never ending stream of quality players they still continue to be able to bring in and fit under their cap might find cause to wonder how exactly they manage it... Either Warrington is an utterly spectacularly fabulous place to play RL in and players are happy to accept less of a wedge to go there than they could get at other clubs, or their accountants, HR and lawyers deserve Olympic Gold Medals...



Agreed - a desperation signing. But sadly further proof of the lack of available quality that we had to go out and pay a lot of money (ambition again anyone?) on a wild punt on a player to play a non-natural position to him as there was simply noone else available.



Disagree - Flanagan is a very good grafter who'll only get better under a non-clueless coach. LaFranchi has been a very good signing - maybe not the ultimate answer at prop but a fantastic signing nevertheless who'll do big things for us next season used properly.



Again: what players? We desperately need a half and frickin' Smith was the best player available for lawk's sake. I'm frankly more than happy that we didn't enter a bidding war over him as he just wouldn't have been worth it. We haven't got the money to pay a fee for Brough or Chase (even if the rumours of Cas wanting rid at a cut-price are true). We've no quota for an Antipodean (curse the skies for Hohaia again). Who else is there? The reason we panic-signed Hohaia is that there just isn't anybody. Criticise the reliance on the youth policy if you like, but giving another season to see what Brown can make of Wheeler and Gaskell is by far our best option right now.

True. That's down to coaching/tactics, training/fitness and psychology/motivation, 3 areas we've been way behind the curve on for a long, long time. It is not down to basic player quality of player. Only the basic superior quality of many of our players has kept us in the top 4 and in trophy contention since DA left. How many other first-team squads in SL could have finished 3rd last season and 4th this with the kind of injuries we suffered last year and the appallingly limited tactics this? Warrington and noone else, and we've established that we simply don't have the money with 2 million a year losses and a brand new stadium to compete with their bottomless pockets and loophole-finding. Put Hock or Carvell into our setup and they'd look demotivated plodders lacking aggression in big games that you'd be screaming for us to be rid of in no time. Put Wilkin into either of the W's setups and you'd be enthusing about him as the kind of player Saints need to be showing the ambition to go out and sign inside six months. Wholesale mass personnel changes are simply just not the answer - making the most of what we have most definitely is.

*sigh*



Go away please - I can't be d after past head-to-wall interfaces with you to waste my time trying to have a debate with you...

The players can be individual world beaters but without a top coach they are just a bunch of lads running around without a clue not too disimilar to what we saw against Warrington this week.

Listening to Joynt on SLSM this week it was great to hear him talk about Hughes, McRae, Hanley, Millward. Inspiring coaches! DA was an inspirational coach also. The coach will always set apart the best from the almost theres. Look at Warrington with Cullen and Lowes, they were going nowhere but had the resources (Simon Moran) to bring on good players. That has completely changed under Smith. Leeds too, before Smith (again) and McLennan they had minor success with Murray and disaster under Bell and Powell. Since DA left we have been the almosts, granted we lost our golden generation in the process. Potter was an almost, Simmons was a never. Rush/KC will be a never too. I dont like saying it but i can see Brown being the almost. Watching a programme about Mal Meninga on Sky showed that he is the inspiration this side/town/fan base needs. A team that combines the flamboyance of the Millward era with the steel of Anderson and a passion mainly for winning.

A revamp is needed from the top down. A head over heart scenario. Wellens has to go, Gardner has to go, Flannery is gone, Hohaia should join him. Magennis will never be good enough, Meli gets a stay of execution, Shenton has shipped off already. Yes we missed out on big signings like Hill, Ellis, Lynch. But we needed to stay out of the fee-paying medium risk market because of the investment we were making off the field.
We have a ground owned by US. A state of the art facility designed specifically for St Helens RLFC. Speccies will moan and groan about how their money is spent on god awful players giving us mediocre rugby but as cold hearted as it sounds id much rather be stood at Langtree Park than Knowsley Road. KR had its teams, its traditions, its history. It also had its leaks, its rust, its lack of bogs and structual damage that was destroying the club from its very soul. Heck we didnt even take money from the burger vans! Times got tough, speccies got annoyed the new stadium plans were taking forever to come through and the world crashed. I feel for EMc because he had to make a choice, the ground or the team. Being the businessman he is and the lover of Saints i didnt envy his decision. He rightly chose the stadium, so what if we get beat in Grand Finals, there'll be more. Yeah they hurt and its painful to watch teams creep up on us and our past dominance. I'll look at Bradford and think that could have been us, i'll look back to Wigan and think they had their "success" and they went through a dry spell.

We were blessed with Long, Sculthorpe, Newlove, Iro, Albert, Lyon, Gidley, Shiels, Cunningham, Martyn, Joynt, Sullivan et al but so were Wigan with Offiah, Edwards et al and so are Leeds now with Burrow, McGuire, Sinfield, Peacock etc. Our time will come around again, we now have the stadium we wanted so we can start to build a team to make history once again. Its a long process but when it comes good, which it will, then we'll be winning in pretty much every way. But first, looking past the upcoming Brown era, EMc needs to start convincing Meninga that St Helens is lovely in the summer time because the Saints legacy begins with him at the helm.

Feel free to ridicule!

What's there to ridicule?

Is this notion that we've had to cut costs due to the stadium genuine? Are we spending less than the cap currently? I've seen no suggestion from the club that we are. I've always thought we've taken our eye off the ball in terms of the squad because of the work on the stadium, which obviously and rightly took priority, but it doesn't look like actual spending on the playing side has diminished, just the care in ensuring it's spent well?

Well we gave new contracts to the likes of Lomax, Wheeler, Foster, Wilkin etc over the last few years so I can see us operating toward the top of the cap. We do have players who I wouldn't pick myself but a good portion of this situation is down to poor management choices and the poor recruitment choices they have made.

I hope against hope that Brown will shake things up, but my optimism has been tempered slightly with the re-signing of Wellens.

I'd love to hear an honest assessment of that from Eamon. Not the official club statement where it praises him and calls him the best fullback in the world, but hear him candidly tell us why they've done it. Sentimentality is the only reason I can think of, yet we've shown absolutely none of that to any player I can remember in the past. Do they really intend to play him at fullback for another season when he's clearly physically and mentally broken now? He's the complete opposite of the backs Brown normally goes for. Turner could be argued to be a classic Brown signing, pacy, powerful and youthful, so I can understand that one despite his deficiencies, but Wello just doesn't fit.

Brown likes to play people out of position to try and bring different elements out of their game, he also likes his hookers in numbers. So how about this line up

Makinson
Turner
Wellens
Jones
Meli
Lomax
Gaskell
Perry
Roby
TP
Manu
La Franki
Wilkin

LMS
Another prop
Lance
Clough

I think we we seeing what 5 years of poor or no recruitment can do to a team, we are no longer the entertainers, we depend on good go forward to lay the platform for robes to do his stuff or we need penalties.

We can no longer go the length of the field with the backs we have, I doubt any could do the length without getting caught. The backs are basically poor, we've go no back that can make a break or even make anything happen. I'd say they are the worst set of backs I've seen play for saints since I've watched saints. This lot couldn't even lace the boots of the likes of Tanner, Quirk, hunte, loughlin, Neil Holding, tea Ropati, Save Lyon, Darren Bloor, Vievers, mark Bailey, Gus o'donnel, Shane cooper etc.

We've lost some worldclass backs over the super league era, the likes of Newlove, Iro, Gidley, Lyon, Long, Scully Goulding and other top players like Sullivan, Albert, Martyn but we've never replaced them with quality, I know it's near impossible to replace Newlove, Long, Lyon, Scully etc but we should be getting the next best we can.

McManus brainwashed saints fans that we was going with youth, telling us it's the only way forward, telling us we've got the best youth in the country but I'm sorry, that was total tripe, it was us doing it on the cheap! Fair enough, we had a new stadium to pay for but why not just tell the truth? Where is this youth now? We are full of player 30yrs old plus!

I said the lack of recruitment would come back and bite us but I got the usual response on here by the brainwashed was we've got all these great kids so we don't need to bring players in, yeah right!

To be fair though last year was the first year outside the top 2. This is what I mean by unrealistic expectations of a sporting cycle.

Look at the down years at other clubs and look at the years of our slim pickings. There is no comparison.

We were always going to have to come down from winning titles, what happened to the likes of Wigan, Hull, Bradford after their glory days.

If this is our down time then fair enough, but lets not get all amature dramatic and believe we have been hard done to in this time. Where is our brush with relegation, where is our time not making finals and not even looking likely to get close.

For our poorest side since the start of SL, then 3rd is pretty much astounding not discraceful.

Well said

No one is saying we're underperforming though, just that Saints aren't and haven't been trying hard enough to build a squad capable of winning trophies. We'll still be discussing how we just need one or two players when we've past the 10 years without a trophy mark.

Well I see Wigan got beaten by the wire tonight by even more than we did, so should they also be discussing a clear out.

6 years without a trophy is not what we want obviously, but are we not trying hard enough? I'll agree we have got things wrong, but I don't see that as a lack of trying, just a lack of getting it right for the very very top of our sport. If we where not trying, why would we panic by Lance?

Surely if we where not trying we would have just said Lomax and Gaskell are doing ok lets not bother.

I'll say it again - In the last 2 years we've:

[listWon a bidding war for the current 1st choice GB centre
Signed an Ossie international prop
Signed an Ossie international 2nd row
Signed NZ's World-Cup winning full-back
Re-signed TP despite determined competition from money-no-object Wire
Re-signed Sia on a long contract against competition from money-no-object NRL clubs
Signed probably the best 2nd row in the country over the last few seasons
Offered Eastmond the same money as a money-no-object RU club[/list:u

If that's "a lack of ambition" and "settling for mediocrity" then FFS I hope Saints and Big Mac and co. continue being similarly "unambitious" for at least the next 20 years. "Lack of ambition" for me all the way, please.

We cannot compete with Wire and their accountants in raw financial terms. Nobody can. You're an utter idiot if you think that we realistically could, or that we should be attempting to do so. We are doing pretty bloody well compared to the rest of the league thank you very much.

Please don't talk sense, the doom and gloom merchants will bust a blood vessel. It really doesn't suit their agendas to even consider any of the points that you have raised.

Do you think replacing James graham with a average NRL backrow was good recruitment?

Do you think signing a NRL fullback in lance hohaia to play at stand off is good recruitment?

Do you think never replacing centres is good recruitment? We've played with one centre since willie talau went, we've had wheeler, flannery, jones, Meli all cover there and non have made any real impact!

When McManus publicly told us we will have a team to grace the new stadium, did you think the 3 we brought in graced the stadium?

Also, the retention is shocking

If nobody better was on the market at the time that didn't come with a transfer fee, then quite possibly. I think he's been a good signing though probably not the bullocking prop we need.



Nope - desperation signing but understandable given that we were suddenly faced with no #6 or #7 for this season at the start of last (a position that you can rightly argue was down to bad judgement on Saints part with Pryce and Eastmond's contracts). He was simply the best player on the market that had ever worn a #6 on his back at the time. You can argue that Saints had little choice but to gamble on him. A gamble that has spectacularly failed so far....



Replacing them with what? Who's been on the market without a transfer fee involved since Talua left that was any better than other players we had at the club at the time? Shenton - signed him. That's more or less it...



We're not discussing the quality of decision making in recruitment, much of which has indeed not been great (but I think still understandable given circumstances at the time). We're discussing the preposterous allegations of a "lack of ambition" on Saints' behalf. Again - you can with some justification make an argument over the quality of some of Saints' recruitment. There is no way whatsover you can question the ambition of it.

I've got problem with our retention/recruitment for few years now and IMO the lack of and in some cases poor recruitment has cist us grand final wins.

I think the club has lost some ambition, no matter what sport it is, teams need to build on success and not just sit back and stay satisfied, we should have been looking to replace scully, long, KC, gidley etc nearer the time and not waiting until they was finished and start panicking.

When you consider we lost eastmond, graham, Moore and pryce last year who was big big earners and replaced them with hohaia, Laffranchi and flanaghan then IMO that shows signs of lack of ambition and also signs of doing it on the cheap.

From what I can remember, the money behind our board eclipses the money SJM brings to the Warrington table. We have some very rich men on the board.

I think they are more prepared to splash the cash on players more than our board.

When was the last time we paid for a player?

Love Warrington or hate them, they ate a club with ambition.

[u[iWith who?[/i[/u

Warrington's remarkable salary-cap handling apart, it is utterly impossible for any SL club to have big-money players on the field and similar quality younger replacements in the reserves as well. Where are Leeds' ready-made replacements for Sinfield, Webb, McGuire, Burrow, Peacock in their squad now all lined up to spring seamlessly into action when they're all gone in a few seasons? Where are Wigan's replacements for Leuluai, Carmont, Richards, Lima, Finch, Fielden right now? Are Leeds' and Wigans' recruitment rubbish as well? Don't talk such unutterable nonsense.

No, they are a club [uwith money[/u... Money we simply [u[ido not have[/i[/u right now. We've lost =#FF00004 million quid in the last 2 years FFS...... Would you be happier if we sold LP, ground-shared permanently at Naughton Park and used the cash to start competing with Warrington's transfer fees?

Read the post that I replied to!

He stated we had a very rich board, I stated that their board are prepared to pay transfer fees.

If that not correct?