I think in terms of a recruitment policy the sooner the club can accept relegation the better. For totally different reasons over the last few years there have been times when we recruit much later than everyone else. I would hope the club are having conversations with key players to decide who would be willing to play in the championship. We can then start recruiting a pack and some half backs - hell a whole team really! We don't want to miss out on recruiting good players for the championship because we are in denial about going down.

Whilst the current squad may not have many takers when they are released I don't think the supporters would particularly welcome many of them staying either.

It's been said the ChampionSuperLeagueship2 quota limit is to be moved to 5 (currently 1 in the Championship), that has Adam Henry staying written all over it.

Well the club did try to resign Leon Pryce, but he's gone for a SL contract with Hull. Can't blame him.

O'Brien has said in today's T&A that he wants to stay even if we go down.

Adam Henry would be fine for SL2, I'd have no qualms with him staying if he wants to.

I read that twice to see if there was some subtext I'd missed. If our only criteria for keeping players is that they will appear marginally less crap in a lower division, then we are buggered.

Henry has scored plenty of tries this year to be fair.
Just his defence is poor. We have to be realistic, we're going down a division which means we aren't going to have quality players. Players on the cheap who can do a job for us in SL2

[iEdited for brevity[/i

Plenty? I suppose it's all relative in that he's scored a healthy percentage of the few tries we are capable of scoring.

I'd get rid myself but I accept some people see things I don't about him.

Get rid.

He's our 4th best centre - after Purts, Blythe & Arundel.

And our 4th best winger, after Kear, George & Sam Wood.

He's a disaster at 2nd row. Thank goodness we only played him there once.

I suppose if Purts, Blythe leave, then we may have no option. But I would hope there were a couple of centres kicking about who we could have.

Have a look through the current Championship clubs and tell me which backs are both available and significantly better than Henry. There won't be many.
We are going to have one hell of a job to even muster up a full squad for next season, it will be far easier to try and retain those already on our books than recruit new faces.

The one positive to come out of the Leon Pryce story is that we at least managed to get him sat down with Marc Green. That shows we are, at the very least, making movements behind everything else going on.

I have no problem with us dropping down a league next season, but I am still incredibly anxious about what sort of side we'll have for potentially the most crucial season in the club's history.

Like vile vultures circling around carrion with a malevolent glint in our beady black eyes, can't we have a shufty at Featherstone for people they have to get rid of?

I really worry that we are between a rock and a hard place here. Way WAY too late to recruit decent players if the miracle of staying in SL were to happen. And now increasingly too late to assemble a SL2 squad. It can't be all that far-fetched to imagine our 2015 squad being assembled so late on that it can't make the top 4.

Just thought I'd re-print the illustrated version of Pumpy's post

Where are the dark satanic mills? My bleak story is clearly set in cleckhuddersfax whereas that looks like a quaint street in York.

There's no way in my post apocalyptic tale you'd find Japanese people wondering down the shambles buying fudge for £10.

Soz, my bad, I accidentally put up the version without the apocalyptic pits of hell opening up

I made a post in another thread about Crossley and Hellewell both leaving Fev. I'd take both of them but someone else seemed to think that Steve is off to Cas, so who knows.
At one stage early in his career, Ben Hellewell was a stand out performer in our academy - playing at fullback and dancing his way through defences for fun. He moved to Wire, never got a look in, and is now at Featherstone. He had a pretty good world cup playing for Scotland and would be a decent addition to our backline if we could get him.

I also find it criminal that at this moment in time, Curtis Naughton doesn't have a club for next season and has no idea what he'll end up doing. When Leeds lost their promising youngsters to the NRL, they kept in constant contact with them and as soon as they got shipped out to a feeder club they were making efforts to bring them home.
Curtis is in exactly the same position now and he was one of the most exciting academy prospects we had produced in a long time. I appreciate he moved to Aus with family, but I would hope the club have at least had the courtesy and foresight to give the kid a phone call. I'm not holding my breath though.

I assume that BK is leaving at the end of the season. If only Naughton would have delayed his plans he potentially could have been given the number 1 jersey next year.

From the impression Naughton gave of himself, leading up to his departure, it wouldn't surprise me if he thought he was too good for SL2 (Championship).

Shame really, was a real prospect!

He certainly was a decent prospect. As a young man with big ambitions he may have learned that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Wasn't Curtis another young Bradford academy star that fell out with Francis Cummins?

He gave that impression. He seemed to think he should have played more game time that he did.

I think he was also in talks to extend his contract in the season leading up to his departure, but the clubs valuation of him was different from what he was requesting.

Maybe the two are linked?

[iLeon, I hear you have a younger brother, what's his phone number?[/i

I wouldn't be against Karl re-joining to be honest. But then I did always hold a candle for him many moons ago.

Bit 50 shades of grey that...

One thing that's bugging me is people banging on about not preparing for next season. I would imagine that the club are but they can't sign terms now as al superleague contracts will be null and void if relegated.

The club can't announce any new signings either because they don't know for definite what league they'll be in.

I get the feeling from the things being said that they are planning just that and it wouldn't surprise me if a large number of signings are then announced once we are mathematical down

Am I missing something with today's Leon Pryce article....we could have paid Leon whatever salary he wanted, and under the home grown exemptions only £40k of his salary would have been on the cap. So why is relegation such a deal breaker? Does he still have ambitions of getting an international call up? Or is it trophies he wants? He already won everything the british game had to offer when he was here last time though, so....it's a strange one for me.

I thought Leon would be a good signing for us [ibecause[/i we were heading to the Championship, not despite it like Pryce says. Fair play to him if he can do it at Hull FC though, I just worry it may end in disappointment like Carvell's move there.

As for ourselves, to be honest I'd be really annoyed if we did take the approach you outlined - "we could have paid Leon whatever salary he wanted" - after everything I'd be shocked if we weren't using the dreaded c words, "cut" and "cloth"!