We can have a bench of hookers, instead of 2nd rowers. It's Macca's new masterplan.
Have faith.

For the good of the team it surely has to happen soon? How long do you give a player to find his form? He may be our captain but he doesn't deserve his place right now and should be dropped. I dunno whether Rinaldi is our answer at 7 but it has to be worth a try.

I agree with others on here though who have called for Sykes at 6 and BJ at 7 for Hull KR. Sykes has done fairly well at stand off and with Menzies on the right we look stronger defensively.

In which case he would take the RFL to court and win.

Why would he.

He is an EU national. He is not allowed to be subject to restrictive employment practices such as nationality based quotas.

We can do what we like to non-EU nationals.

And TBF I see no reason why the French should be discriminated against, given that their player development isn't much less important to the English game than that of English players. We need someone within cooee who can give us a game.

He isn't if he say spent time at an English club in there academy he would be classed as federation trained even though he would still be classed as French. Under the new rules it's where you were trained not where you are from which is a major difference.

When they made French players non-federation it was a big shock for me.

I accept your point, but I can't see the RFL outweighing the European Court in Rinaldi took it that far. If you are French, you have the right to work in the UK without any restrictions, no matter what rules the RFL try to put in place.

Something that they realised with Simon Finnegan when he threatened it.

It's the same system UEFA are introducing in to the champions league and they wouldn't have done anything that could be challenged in court. The case of Finnegan and the Henderson brothers is totally different as they were born in Britian to British parents. But due to cirumstnces out of there control they would have been classed as overseas trained even though in the eyes of the law they were Bits this is why the RFL back tracked.

UEFA keep threatening to introduce it into the CL, and then their legal people come up with another reason why they can't.

As an EU citizen, Rinaldi is entitled to exactly the same treatment as Finnegan and the Hendersons. The RFL rules cannot beat the law of the land.

The RFL seem to do what they like to suit though, so don't be surprised.

For some reason that escapes everyone watching the game Deacon keeps his place however he plays. I would certainly be moving Jeffries to scrum half for HKR game and even if Rinaldi is not fit we can use Sykes/Menzies at stand off.

This has been said on here for months.

Still aint going to happen though is it?

In Deacon's defence he hasn't been all that bad in the last 2 matches. Fair enough he hasn't been all that great but of the 2 half backs he's been better than Jefferies against Leeds and Cas

I honestly forget much of the Leeds game now, but I think you were watching a different Cas game to me.

It's all relative.

I think it is really

To what/whom?

By letter of law yes, but all clubs did a gentlemans agreement on it, they all agreed to these new rules, if rfl just pushed it through without asking them then they could be taken to court, but all clubs sat down with rfl, they went thru whats best to develope england/gb etc and came up with these rules between them.
If not all clubs would go thru if they could have an eu passport. ie korkidas etc.

Deacon being not that bad is relative to his own usual badness.

But a gentleman's agreement wouldn't stand up in court in Rinaldi, or somebody in a similar position, chose to challenge it.

Uefa has two problems with this. Firstly, because of EU regs, the teams and respective associations would have to enter into an [uagreement [/uonly as it could not be enforced. Secondly, Eufa would be open to individual EU players bring restraint of trade charges.