It certainly appears so, an embarrassment to himself, his club and the game.

Right call for me with Longstaff, loved his enthusism & workrate - he COULD develop into top class, but won't strengthen our 1st 17 just yet.
Savelio, Lane & Cator decent back row IF ( and its a big IF ) all fit & healthy all season. We have backup in Gardner, Sao, Lovodua, Scott, Griffin, Severs etc. To me we need a dominant second rower, not another squad player.
Fully appreciate salary cap issues, suspect we might have to wait a year.
Wish Ellis all the best & thanks for showing up some of our 'experienced' boys, you will be always welcome at the KC, whenever that is & whatever shirt you wear.

“Ellis”?

Ellis Longstaff.

Think Longstaff was a breath of fresh air, as we had a team that couldn’t be bothered to make an effort. We weren’t used to that desire and enthusiasm.

Wouldn’t mind seeing him back at some point, but we need a bit of size in the back row first.

No more players according to HDM. We couldn't work out a deal to get Wallace

Yep. I asked Dan Tomlinson this morning about Wallace and he said no further recruitment. TS happy to go with what he's got.

Fingers crossed we don't get any serious injuries to Lane or Savelio next season

Indeed, we look very weak in the 2nd row and lack any real size. Possibly Sao &/or Griff to 2nd row as an option?

At least the recruitment we have done is very good, and the coaching set up is a huge improvement from previous years. Will be an opportunity for the younger players as well.

We can build on that, and reshape the squad a lot more next year.

Key area now is to start now retention for 2024, we have a lot of players OOC and I have no doubt that Radford will be looking at our players particularly Sao, not everyone but him Satae, Fash and Brown are key IMO.

Plenty more wiggle room next season
I expect we'll see an upgrade from what we get rid of.

I hope so, but we should look to re-sign Sao as soon as we can, doubtless Cas will be in his options next year and he, for me is a superb , often under appreciated player. I'd rather not lose any of our overseas props, given that evans showed some improvement as the season wore on, but Sao would be a bigger loss than him or Satae, if that was the scenario we faced.

We will , hopefully see a few of the younger players develop under Smith, which could mean that we go for some real quality in the positions we are lacking a bit, by releasing some high earners who are coming to their end with us next year.

Think some NRL clubs might be looking at Sao for 2024

For me both Sao & Satae need to be secured asap. I think as GB mentioned Sao has often been underrated, the guy can play for long minutes and yes he’s given a fair few penalties away but I feel that most were born out of frustration and busting his nuts for the team. Both him and Satae are key players for us and integral to us moving forward.

key player for us but not for NRL clubs

Sao has just moved house and referred to Hull as "paradise" so hopefully he's planning to stick around for a while yet.

Sao is a potential candidate for captaincy for me, in particularly if he does make the move to the 2nd row following be success their during the WC. Doesn’t seem the loudest of characters but does his talking through his effort and commitment.

Sao has been average all season in the front row then add in his discipline issues he'd almost become a liability. Now your all lauding him as amazing and a must re-sign after a few good games at second row for another team



He's one of the players like Taylor who needs to seriously up his game next season or bye bye

Who said that he's "amazing"?

Agreed certainly not as good as people are making out

Loads of penalties and silly errors

Played well at times for samoa is clouding people judgement of him for us

Alot of the time satae was carrying the pack on his own

Sao was one of the form props in the comp before he injured his knee.

Plays much longer minutes compared to the other 3 senior props.

Contract wise one thing we'll have to watch next season is Sao, Satae, Evans and Taylor will all be 30 plus.

He has to play long minutes to make up for the 3 weeks of suspensions he recieves the following monday.

Wow! Just wow! He's a consistent 7 or 8 each week, the only prop we have that has an engine for a full game and I actually think he played better at Hull than he did with Samoa , so no clouding of judgement there, for me he's up there with the best props in SL. Satae is great,when he's in the mood, but he needs spelling frequently as his stamina is sometimes questionable - that is not a criticism, merely an observation and those two props are our best combo since Taylor and Watts in their pomp.