He's done it in the 21s and has played all of his junior rugby as a centre.

my apologies not seen him play at centre as haven't seen any 21 games.

there is a difference between doing that as a junior and at super league standard.

are his ball handling skills any good or just average?

We ll Yeaman had good hands when he broke into the first team and seemed to stop at that point so maybe its irrelevant!



Think with Briscoe his ability to outmuscle the defenders in the tackle and offload to his winger would work well, providing we dont stifle his ability.

to the first bit in bold



to the second bit in bold

hope to good we end up eith a proper centre who can put his winger away ie a gidley rather than another yeaman

TBF to Yeamo, i keep saying it but he was 2nd on our assists last season and i think he has better hands than he is given credit for still. Ive not seen us put a set move on were Yeamo gets the ball with the chance to put his winger away, even when Cooke was here he would either hit Yeamo or Raynor, never Yeamo to then pass to Raynor.

very fair points

can't wait to see yeaman with a good supply of ball again and see how much better he will look. our tactics over recent years haven't played to our 3/4's so any back we have signed hasn't looked as good as they should have

Exactly.

Im looking forward to seeing Long, but i also think we need to get some basics right, like maybe standing a yard deeper in attack to allow us to shift the ball. Seems too much emphasis is put on stats like getting over the gain line which makes teams stand flatter but in reality its another stifling tactic.

i totally agree,
you can't really blame a centre for being a bit ball greedy in these circumstances,
to look after his winger he has to recieve a good supply of ball too.

First of all I don't know what players earn, these are just educated guesses.

Fitz for Crocker, but I can't see us paying Fitz quite as much as Crocker so I reckon about 20/30k a year saved there.

I reckon Cusack, Hall and Moa combined will be on about the same wage as Long will be.

Tansey will probably come on a similar wage to Thacks.

That leaves the wages of Motu, Byrne, G Horne and Thorman all free. Motu, Byrne and Thorman will all have been on a decent amount and Horne has been around the first team for a while and won't be on a pittance. I reckon we could have close to 300k available for next year if we do release all of those you mentioned. That allows us to buy 2 more top class players and still have a bit in reserve if we need it.

He's taken us to the most boring brand of rugby seen since the inception of superleague

Which I find particularly odd, when Sharp was sacked last year Agar seemed to give us more freedom in attack, and yet this year it's 5 drives and a (poor) kick.