Yet another excellent performance by the beaver. I dont care what anyone says about age this guy is class and was class in every game for us. We should have never ever got rid of him. Big mistake

Same could be said about letting morrison and solomona go alongside Menzies? Too much of a gamble, age and injuries....it would have been sods law had we kept them that they would have been injures or in Menzies case too old

How many games did menzies miss for us while he was with us? oh yeh 1 game. Morrison half of season and same for solomona. Age doesnt mean anything. If he can play and keeps himself fit theres no reason to get rid. He was awesome for us and if now providing the guds at catalan week after week

Loved Beaver and he was a great player for us. I imagine he was on a fair wedge though, the future is with Whitehead/Olbison/Bateman.

Yes but wouldnt it have been great to have had menzies for longer teaching our rising stars. Its crazy to me we ever let himgo

I'd have loved to have him at the club, but at the time we let him go we needed the cap space. We may not have used it, but when we were in the market for a halfback you need that behind you.

As has been said - Olbison/Whitehead/Donno plus Bateman/Addy will do us well for years to come.


I'll add to that that Olbison is starting to look the part - his defence is excellent.

With the team we have now I no doubt that beaver would have made us a miles better team. That's how high I rate him

I agree we'd be a better side, but you also have to think that we want to keep hold of our young stars and they won't wait forever.

Menzies was quality tonight against us, however we are much better off now as champions through investing in our young backrowers, they do the job, they don't have to be flashy try scorers to do the job.

Hindsight is wonderful but at the time we had a full quota with o/s players contracted for further years and we needed to reduce wage bill to add strength in numbers & depth.

It just seems to be our luck that players who we let go because they are old or injury prone then go on to play brilliantly and injury-free for the the next two seasons

So why sign Sibbit and Elima then.

so we have some experienced players to call on while likes of whitehead,olbison donaldson etc develop? And I'd guess Elima and Sibbits combined wage is still a significant saving over what we were paying menzies allowing us to strengthen over areas of team with the surplus. Fact we didnt spend up to cap isnt really an issue as we had transfer targets that didnt come off.

Keep believing that if you want but I don't believe it.

I'd have loved to keep Menzies at the club to sooner or later go into our coaching setup as well.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it?
The guy is immense, I'd even go so far as to say he's a modern day RL legend. It's a loss to lose a player like that, but we must keep moving forward. Hopefully, Olbison, Whitehead and Donaldson will have kept an ear open to anything Beaver had to say and that some of his magic will rub off on those lads and they crack on.

Should we have ever let Menzies go? Hmmmm duh, absolutely not - with a back 3 all around 20 how useful would he have been to those kids



Watching one of the best to have ever played the game would have been pretty handy!

In hindsight we could have done with him in a few cases this year but the point is that we haven't got him anymore so lets just work with who we have. We might not have signed Elima if Menzies stayed and we can be here all night saying who we should have kept. Pointless discussion!

Its not as if none of those three were here or never played first team or trained with the first team squad last year though. when Beaver was here?

For better or for worse, Beaver has moved on, the club has moved on, and so I suggest should those agonising over what might have been?

Actually all the young players you mention were also a very good reason for keeping Beaver; how much quicker would they improve with quality like that around to help them? Role models like that are hard to come by.

I'd have loved to keep Hape, Big Les, Fielden etc etc but you have to make decisions sometimes whats best for the future if he had stayed I doubt we would have seen Olbison this year and may have meant we lost him to another super league side because he wasn't breaking through! Also we wouldn't have been able to afford the 11 players we brought in had we had him in our cap because at a guess I would say he had a fair bit of money on him! As much as I loved beaver I think it was the right decision to let him go.

I think the board have to play what's in front of them and I'm sure that what they did as regards Beaver was correct when they did it. Hape, Vainikolo and Stu Fielden left at an earlier time when we needed to save some money and Beaver left, I guess largely due to Orford mucking us about, though as it turns out we still have a spare overseas spot AND the money for another player, so it would seem that, in reality, Beaver could have stayed.

As I say though, the board have to do what they feel is necessary in the circumstances at that time, and you can't knock them for that. Rather like Glenn Morrison, who was looking very injury prone when he was off loaded. If only we'd known he would come through that period as strong as ever I'm sure he would have stayed at Odsal, but it can't be denied that it was the correct decision at the time, especially in the light of the back rowers we have coming through. It's always disappointing to see players of that standard leave though.

But it can be denied, i loudly denied it and any such claim doesn't hold water. We all know what is meant by "injury prone" and Morrison never was. He had a couple of serious injuries, which is something 100% completely different. "Injury prone" is like some guy whose hamstring is suspect, or keeps suffering knee ligament problems, or has a dodgy shoulder which keeps going. That was never Morrison. Suffering a serious injury or two cannot sensibly be said to make you "prone" to it happening again.

Morrison has never in his career been injury prone, he's just a rock hard diamond, and there was never any reason to get rid on such a ground. IF we got rid cos he was "injury prone" (and I don't think anyone said as much?) then it was a colossal and stupid mistake by someone.

In terms of role models and bringing youngsters on, I can't think how we would not have been better off if we still had Morrison and the peerless Menzies. Instead we got Sibbitt.

Aye, cos Sibbit will be on the same wage as Morrison and Menzies were.

You make an excellent point.

Whatever we pay Sibbitt, it's too much