Glenn Hall?

Oooo could be something in that

I like the way you think Badger..

Without getting into the fine point legal aspects of this situation, surely at the end of the day, Orford signed a contract for three years? He doesn't want to come back and honour his contract and We have given him dispensation at his insistence not to return so what legally could we have fooked up on?
I would be disappointed if we conceded anything to him and as far as i am concerned we should tell him to honour his contract or buy it out!
I am sure he would soon bottle it if he thought it was going to the civil court!

Agreed, but my awnser to last line is ' but its not

This would be the judge and orford

we should give him the money if we are told to by the courts, but keep him, loan him out to a club like Keighley and if he refuses to go..... BOOM we beat him at his own game

...is the right answer.

Scruton signs a 3 year extension

Glenn Hall is gone from player profiles on official site, waiting for T&A to put the story up.

Just been confirmed elsewhere. Glenn Hall released early from his contract.

so that means orford is coming back and herbert and orford will be our half back partnership this year?

Off with the gay porn 'tache FA.

Nada



I _think_, and I have not heard anything to suggest this, that we may be in for Cronk.

that was my initial thought too.

will finch's deal with wigan fall through as a result of the tax payment rulings?

As I see it, all this means is that we can now register Herbert.

I think we could enter the new season with Orford still registered to the Bulls and the ongoing saga as to his release continuing. If and when it is resolved, we may then be able to recruit another player if one suitable is available.

It's been in the back of my mind that we may need to release Hall to get Herbert registered.

So that's now Sheriffe, Reardon, Worrincy & Hall all gone since Potter took over.

If I could have picked 4 players last year that I wanted rid of most, I would have picked Sheriffe, Reardon, Worrincy & Hall.

Ok we're losing Beaver & Orful too, but we're not gonna miss the latter one when he barely played anyway.

There's only really Beaver who we'll miss. Anyone else has been replaced with someone better.

With hindsight, we probably should have twigged when the squad for Sunday was announced. It included Herbert, who wasn't registered, and didn't include Hall, who has supposedly been training since early doors.

Bit of a blinkered viewed saying that we aren't going to miss Orford, he practically carried our team when he played last year and look what happened when he got injured. We know nothing about Herbert so he may turn out to be better but I dare say he won't bring what Orford did.

Good Luck to Glenn, didn't have the best season for us but that said who did in that team!

Which is why I specified the reason. A fit Orford? Yes of course we'd miss him. I'd be amazed if Herbert ends up being the same quality of player. I was saying that we won't miss a player that wasn't playing. Regardless of someone's ability, if he isn't on the park then he's no use. On that basis, Orford was no use from May last year onwards.

Apologies I guess I read the comment wrong, but agreed you can't miss an unfit player but you can miss a world class fit player.

Definitely. I would never be daft enough to suggest we wouldn't miss a fit Orford on the pitch. That's crazy talk. Regardless of what we all think of how him and his agent have handled themselves in recent months, that doesn't take away from the fact that he was a top quality player.

So the "cull" on McNamara wasters continues then. Excellent news. In the likes of.......

Godwin
Hall
Sheriffe
Reardon
Worrincy

etc. being moved on we sure as heck have rid ourselves of some utter donkeys.

Vive la revolution!

Add to this list

Sculthorpe
Menzies
Nero
Orford
Wardle
G. Burgess

That's 11 players out from last years squad whilst we've signed 10. I appreciate that the last 2 on the list were fringe members of the squad and that we will be adding players to the squad from the u20s. Nevertheless a stated intention was to have a bigger squad than last year and at present it doesn't look any bigger. 4 experienced props is not enough + Crossley and T Burgess added to the understandable issue in the halves.

I'm happy with those leaving but would love to see a 6 and a prop arrive.

Oviously out of the above Menzies is a loss but I am not shedding too many tears over the rest (I accept that Burgess and Wardle have a lot of potential however)

In regards to the Props, would it be wildly out of line to suggest that, if required, Langley could play prop?

I'd say we are stronger in the props as Hargreaves is surely going to figure more than Sculthorpe! Kopczak will hopefully come on more and there will be opportunities for Crossley and Burgess. We have 4 props capable of doing a job in Lynch, Scruton, Kopczak and Hargreaves plus two as back up.

On the wings we have more strike power and with Finegan coming through and having the benefit of full time training should add depth. In the centres we've lost Nero and Menzies as regulars but got Walker and Ah Van.

At fullback Royston adds cover.

As I see it there are two glaring weaknesses. First a lack of cover in the halves. If Herbert or Kearney get injured (and this is likely looking at their records) we're down to playing the unsuitable (Sykes) and the untried (Southernwood). While Addy looks a great prospect he should be looking at loose forward rather than the halves IMO.

The second weakness I see is the lack of a big aggressive impact forward. We may decide to use Scruton in this way but I still think that a wide running backrower would be a good addition to add to Elima and Whitehead as first choices.

All in all we've got rid of our poorer players and got some slightly better ones in many cases but we're still lacking a bit of something extra. As a result I think 6th is the absolute best we're capable of next season with 7th or 8th more likely. Missing out on the 8 is still a possibility too if we suffer bad injuries in certain areas.