right , it looks like Ryan as finally indicated his intentions for next year.

hopefully he can now carry on with the job in hand and play his heart out for the next few months. Maybe with this burden of his shoulders he may just give us a few games to remember him by.

tbf i think we have come as far as possible with Ryan and likewise so has he with wakefield im sure Mr Kear will have something up his sleeve.

he's 23 how can that be as far as we can go?

trb you say jk can be hard nosed about what a player is worth and pay him accordingly but what relevance is that if he is under contract ?

Thought the hard-nosed was more about how much of a transfer fee they were willing to offer (to be spent in M&S of course by Ted) or what player+ cash they were willing to offer in return.

Glesson is really the replacement. He should get a regular run at centre now with a young one covering him.
Other centre is either Martin or a replacement for Martin.

and find another Gleeson we can pick up while they are young from other club. Did that with George too but not quite the same level of success

I'd think fans would more likely see it though as 'sell Atkins, replace with Evans'. Although if the funds it frees up are used towards Darren Lockyer at 6, then fair enough.

indeed, mis read it.

not completely convinced replacing atkins with another gleeson is the way forward, especially when we have murphy and george in the wings who are not far behind i would imagine. and we would definitely be weaker if we swapped atkins and only brought in evans imo.

whatever happens will happen i suppose

It's a 3-dimensional thing:

How much is his contract
How much is being offered (cash / players)
How much will a suitable replacement cost and will that leave me some left over for other areas of the squad

He knows his eggs you know!

Time for you to phone a friend

We've got the money.

As I said to those who were going over the top in recent weeks,
[i"be carefull what you wish for"[/i

I've also said on a few occasions we should revel in the good things that Ryan does instead of slating him for his shortcomings. He's still adding things to his game, some players make the 1st team and have all the skill in the world but can't handle the physicality, Adam's doing it the other way round.

I'll be gutted if he goes because as good as he is he will only get much better over the next 3 or 4 years.

Identifying weak areas is the easy bit young players, them having the maturity to apply themselves to fixing those weaknesses is the hard bit, Ryan at 23 is at that stage.

He will also improve because of the company he's mixing with. Playing for England and being in a play off situation will help his game loads. If he moves to another club they will see the benefit and not us.

On a side note, I noticed in the LE this morning that Leeds are unlikely to renew the contract of Ashley Gibson at the end of this year.
He's out of contract and would cost us nothing, we should even look at signing him now for the rest of this season (SC permitting).
He is a skillfull centre who has plenty of SL experience and a good grounding from Leeds youth system.

Rumours on Cas board about him going there.

Ashley Gibson could be a good call!

If Ryan goes to the Wolves whats the odds on Paul Johnson coming in the other direction? Although he'll be 31 come the start of next season is that another 30+ too many?

Well once agian, and I don't want to come over as a know it all, I pushed the club to investigate the possibility of Gibson over a year ago.

Along with Kopczak, Flannigan etc...

Told you so.

All the more reason to ambush the deal.

ryan is from leeds or sumet so i dont think he would refuse a contract from the rhinos

Dont know if it is just me but i think a lot of the reason were doing ok this season is because we kept pretty much the sqaud we had from last year. If all the so called rumours are correct then we are gonna be almost a new team.
Brad Drew
Mat Peterson
Ryan Atkins
Ollie Wilkes
Tony Martin
Danny Brough
Steve Snitch
Gonna take time to gel again

tHATS TERRIBLE NEWS. Atkins still can get better at passing the ball his physical attributes hes a monster and a young british centre. Evans a back up centre for Gleeson and Atkins yes thats great. Evans a replacement for Atkins very poor indeed !

Not really a Monster!

my concern is also that with so many leaving (if true), then we will take time to gel.

it is no coincidence that the teams with the least turnover of players, do the better the following year. we ourselves are proof of that.

we need to keep a nucleas of players together, but our nucleas could be a lot smaller than others!!!

the other concern for me is that we seem to be linked with "journeymen" players as replacements. i know that we all want to see a team of stars and that is not possible at wakey, but at least a couple of stars are required.

maybe henderson to replace atkins at centre............(said in jest, but you never know...???)

Were there any quotes to go with the article, from anyone that would be involved in the deal?

I'll reserve judgement until it's official, but as gutted as I'd be to lose Atkins I'm sure wiley old JK will have a plan up his sleeve.

i wouldn't be too concerned about journeymen. we have a couple going out and a couple coming in. as long as we keep the nucleus of the team together. well satisfied with the signings up to press. the pack should be awesome next season and if we secure the services of a good 6 with brough. blanche back and i think there may be another signing to come, think we will do ok. jk seems to be steering things along well.

There could be some truth to this LE article for once. I heard a few weeks ago that we would be losing one of our England internationals at the end of the year & that a fee would come our way. I think we'll be getting somewhere in the region of £70k for Ryan, but at least we don't have to spend immediately on finding a replacement - after all we've had a centre playing out of position in the pack for the last couple of years....JD. He isn't exactly my candidate for MOS this year, but he's still far more capable in the backs than he is in the pack.

i have every faith in john kear whatever happens to mould a team and make it gel whoever comes in and who goes

This dual coaching role concerns me too.

‘Come to Warrington on slightly less money than other clubs can offer, but you’ll top it up when I select you for the England squad’