I agree its always a gamble siging unknown Aussies Miller been poor and Rankin been good.

Beau Champion was mentioned in the Aussie press, I dont' watch NRL so don't know if he is any good. Don't know if we have been linked with any forwards yet.

Still dont understand where that leaves us on centres, we will have Yeaman, Sa, Crooks and new Import.

Also whats our quota situation ? AP mentioned 3 imports on top of: Tallanoa, Rankin, Paea, Sa & Feka. I'm assume Feka after being here a while is off quote but the non of the others would be fed trained would they ?

Give your head a bang, Miller and Rankin were 21.

Josh whatever his name was (although wrongly) linked with us. Why can't we discuss it? It's everything that is wrong with SL, so it has wider issues that concern us all.

I'll happily berate the Josh Cordoba signing by the London Broncos, but we don't get many of their fans on here, do we?

Both Feka and Tallanoa will be off quota under the same clause. And the quota is going up (or may have already increased).

IIRC The non fed trained allowance had gone up to 7 before the start of the season but I believe the quota situation stayed the same. That is how we could get the 2 PNG guys and how we signed Ulugia and Chan.

.
don't watch NRL myself, but from what ive seen and read about him,[i[u if[/u[/i you keep him fit he's a good signing on the wing or fb.


Yeaman I think will be more a squad player next season, Sa I reckon will be our Centre next season, along with Crooks. Don't think we will get another centre tbh, unless its for Centre/2nd Rower purpose???


don't get how this 'works' (if indeed it works at all) not anymore anway

How does Tallanoa get off the non fed as he just got here ? I thought most Fed trained were granfathered in due to being here before the ruling. If the quota is going up to 7 that's far too many, it should be going down! We could end up with Rankin, Feka, Paea, Tallanoa plus 3 more overseas players, we (quite rightly) used to berate Rovers about their preponderance of overseas players now we are doing it ourselves.

So much for youth development.

When players reach 26/27 they should be approaching their peak,they've served their apprenticeship and I would have thought 10 years of hammer in the top league wont do you a lot of good,so perhaps playing in reserve grade for 3 seasons,at a good standard wont be a big disadvantage.
Dobbo is 28 and still hasn't made it in aussie 1st grade yet plenty of clubs over here would snap him up including you so what do you base your decision on mantellato on,is it the fact of who he has signed for ?

I think he will be a good signing for Rovers, wingers who can kick can be very dangerous and useful players indeed.

I can see that. Sa's been sat on his for two years so I'm expecting a lot more from him after an off-season.

Chris Houston of the Knights might be available at the end of the year. He plays back-row or centre but has been filling in at prop. He's Jordan Thompson but with 150 games in the NRL.

Lets be honest your signings this year have included a guy working the bins, a SL reject who barely got a game in 2nd grade french RU and bloke who sat watching London RU from the touchline for 2 years, hardly glowing reports and 2 of those turned out well, the other may still.

I've seen top grade signings come over and flop, The biggest wastes of spaces we have had have had a raft of first grade appearances behind them (Joel Clinton / Garret Crossman) but I'd gladly have driven them back to the airport. For me its the attitude of the player coming over, and that is something you don't know until you've seen them play. A lot of times the players with a rep think it'll be easy, come over for a holiday etc.

BTW I agree the quota rules have become nothing more than something to have clauses to get out of. Either enforce it or scrap it.

They were a gamble and with the 'bin man' and 'SL Reject' tags it didn't exactly excite people as appose to Sneyd has or Paea did. The fact that we signed them means we'll look at their positives and not have as high expectation for them whereas other players we may

Why though? SL/English RL is cash-strapped - the SL salary cap hasn't gone up in a long time, which will equate to a sizeable real-terms decrease. And the NRL has got a lot richer, at the same time.

A fair few players have come over from Oz with little or no first-grade experience and done okay - even when SL was relatively a bit better off. Damian Blanch, Ben Fisher, even Luke Dyer and Mark Lennon. 'The talent is out there, if we give it a chance' argument is pretty much consigned to the wishful thinking bin now - one of the justifications (that both Hudgell and Pearson have given) for the cut to 12 teams is the lack of talent. That's why, just as the dispensations ran out, non-fed got bumped up to 7 too.

Middling signings from Aussie reserve grade are a symptom (mainly, IMO), not the cause of our poverty and shallow talent pool. It'd be comforting to think that if we just gave the kids a go, it'd all come good - I think the problem is deeper and more profound than that.

What did Radford describe your team as early in the season? Rag-tag bunch of misfits or something like that? There's a certain charm to that, so I think it is better to enjoy our RL for what it is rather than holding it to some impossible standard that it cannot currently hope to meet.

either Hull team could sign Sonny Bill and Cooper Cronk and the other team would still find fault. its just in our genes.

Spot on!! We are what we are.

Good post.

were just better

Bang on the money! Make the game as good as it can be now which will include bringing in the best available talent from where ever it is within the current currency and financial constraints. If we do that there's more chance of keeping fans interested and the game viable long enough to try to make it better.

Tallanoa played in the Championship years ago, so benefits from the 'grandfathering' clause. Personally I don't think he should have but there you go.

Are you sure Kosh?

Who for ?

If you get 7 we could sign 3 more.

Next season we will have

Rankin
Sa
Paea
Talanoa
Feka (not counted)

Miller will be gone.

Although I'd be disappointed if we have 8 overseas players next year.

Are you not thinking of Heremaia, he was at Leigh I think.

I didn't know that, agreed its not on but we managed to get Heremia fed trained for similar reasons.

Can talk technicalities all we want, signings like Cordoba, Matellato and Talanoa shouldn't happen. I'd rather watch bang average British kids play for the clubs they love than bang average Aussies that have failed at home.