With Wood and Hill off the bench with Higham! We were certainly spoilt back then.

As we've crept into October, again, I cannot see us signing a prop that will be met with any great enthusiasm.

I’m still wondering who were the great props that we have missed out on (and are/were available and likely to be open to a move to England).

Great props I'm not so sure but props who would have improved our match day squad considerably for the past season or longer:

Ligi Sau
Paasi
Chris Satae (my favourite of the lot)
Matt Prior (short term but he was good this season)
Sam Kasiano

It's not a huge list but any one of those would have made our pack a lot stronger. There are other props in superleague that have a bright future as well, I really like Will Maher and Matty English, both would be fantastic signings. I suspect we will be scraping the barrel and handing a poor pick a 2 year contract which means we miss out on good props who are off contract at the end of next season as well.

It's not all doom and gloom, mulhern has been a good signing, maybe Butler can get a better chance under Powell as well and Philbin can improve back towards his best as well. I don't mind the idea of Bullock signing but it's a bit of a gamble we need a proven quality prop to replace Hill IMO otherwise letting him leave was a massive mistake.

If Aussies are what we want the Australian government are starting to lift travel restrictions so more players may start to become available.

But if we had signed them before they came here how many would have excited us? I’m of the opinion that we shouldn’t panic buy, it rarely turns out well,

They're all a cut above Latu, Tasi and Sita though aren't they? They're panic buys the lot of them.

Latu was a panic buy. Tasi was a squad filler. I’m not sure what Sita was but we gave him an extension which does bring someone’s judgement into question.

To this day I'm convinced that Latu was a case of Holbrook getting back at his old mate Price for us beating Saints in the CC final.

"Look Steve, no hard feelings. I tell you what, I've got a cracking prop here at Titans that would go great in Super League..............."

Heard we're in for Kane Evans, but also read that he's signed for Hull so i don't think we've got him. Looking at our props, if Powell can get the best out of them including Bullock if signed then we aren't looking bad to be honest.
But we are still short of a Prop, i'd be happy with a solid consistant Prop like Adam Sidlow from Leigh. We can look around all day but there literally isn't an abundence of forwards so it's gonna be the best we can find really. But how many times has that gone wrong

I don't think we can replace Chris Hill with Adam siflow and feel optimistic about next season TBH. Hull have a beast of a pack next season if they pull off that signing. Our pack on paper is alright But it's still a little lightweight, we need a big unit off the bench with Philbin having the impact he used to have IMO.

Hull have had a huge pack for several years and it's not done them much good. With the set restart rule I'm not sure having a monster pack is a great advantage any more. I'd much rather have a Cooper or Prior who can do big minutes, is mobile and still eats up yards.

We have one of those and missed out on the other according to rumours at the time. Prior didn't have the best start to his Leeds career but from about halfway through last season and this season he's been really good.

Unfortunately such players are in quite short supply, NRL salary cap means aussie players are becoming too expensive really and who are those players currently in superleague? I'm not sure other than matty English, then again I don't think many (if anyone) would have said Mulhern would be a good signing for us last season but he has defied expectations. Maybe solid and steady is enough, I was really impressed with George King for Hull KR this season, certainly at the back end. The longer there is no announcement the more I feel we haven't got anything lined up at the minute.

Nah mate, Brad Fash, Cator, and Laney are lightweights, Taylor missing nearly two seasons now, The addition of Satea has been tremendous boost, the set restart has probably found our halves and hookers out more.

I don't think there will be any new signings announced until Powell has his feet under the table and the push to flog season tickets is underway. I don't expect any big name signings after all we opened our Christmas present early this year (Williams) so just expect a tangerine and a lump of coal on Christmas day.
I know a lot of people are expecting Hughes to line up at 13 but it wouldn't surprise me to see Hughes line up straight in the front row for quite a number of games.. That would leave the no 13 role more for Clark / Davis to act as tackling machines a bit like Milner and Massey at Cas. We see this at quite a lot of clubs where the 13 is a bit more mobile and covers a lot of ground doing the stuff that is not very glamorous like applying pressure to the kicker. Kick chase and just basically doing a load of tackling.
This would leave Longstaff to cover 11,12 and 13 and front row of Cooper, Mulhern, Philbin, Hughes, Butler, Doro, Harrison (when fit) and possibly Bullock. If we thought a game needed a bigger pack then Philbin or Hughes at 13.
I am looking forward to see what Powell and Co can do with our No9's. I love Clark but his game has not progressed since moving over the pennines. I think Powell will add to his all round game and I would expect to see a few more kicks closer to the try line and possibly in the future the odd kick straight out of DH. When you look at Roby his game has evolved from predominantly a running game 15 years ago to now where he has a lot more strings to his bow. Hoping that both Walker and Clark can progress under Powell etc.

Thoughts on Kibula? We (Bradford) have just signed him from you guys.

Plenty of size, no aggression. He could still come good but never looked the part for me, he played against Salford in the league for us last year when we played all the youths. Sure you will find some videos of that on YouTube. Whatever he was like for us doesn't mean he won't be any good at Bradford anyway. Good luck to him.

Played 2 games for us then out on loan. Had a bad achilles injury in March 2021. Still a young lad though at 22.

What, you mean Jon Clarke to return with his fake tan as conditioning coach, and Asotasi to return as, well, the lump that he was?

“Cooper and Prior” edited for accuracy.

Kane Evans looks nailed on at Hull now.
We’ve not 2 brass farthings in the cap left.
2022 is going to be a tough year for Wire.

I think you will be right Duckie, the current injury list doesn't help at all, but we do still have a good team. I don't mind them losing generally if they've played well but been beaten by a better team, what I can't stand is appalling and boring performances where the team looks like they've never met before. Hopefully they will be a thing of the past and we will at least see some good rugby next season focused more on attack.

You're only as good as your last game so the saying goes, and we won't win any games with 20+ errors no matter who the coach us. This needs fixing first, followed by not giving away a daft penalty by trying to atone for the error. You cannot attack without the ball.

Our pack for 2022 looks like it is going to be the weakest for 20 years.

And even in that crap year of 2002 when we nearly got relegated we had Fozzard and Hilton in the front row and Burns and Domic in the back row. All players who would upgrade us significantly in 2022.

+ Wood
+ Sturminator
+ Guisset
+ Marquet

The thing is we haven't arrived at this pack problem overnight, it's been developing since we did not replace Morley, Carvell or Wood adequately and we have had 3 CEOs and 3 managers.