Welhams lack of a rugby brain would be my worry, hes got the skills to beat someone but id be worried having him organise the defensive line and his ability to read a game is bad enough at centre, it would be woeful at FB.

Might be worth sending Sheriff out on a few months loan to a Championship/Championship 1 club to see how he gets on.

Rover 49 - I totally agree, decent but can be replaced

Good idea, if we can. Would give the club a much better idea of how close he is than the under-20s.

I'm genuinely never sure how easy it is to get our players game time at Championship level - there seems to be an assumption that lower division clubs are eager to do our (SL's) development, on our terms, for us, which I suspect overstates their enthusiasm.

Iain Hardman?

Always thought his was an interesting... is 'predicament' the right word?

Is it better to be a fringe player in SL or a stand-out in the Championship? From both a sporting and financial POV. I'd want a good bit more money to walk away from a half-decent day job for a one or two year full-time SL deal.

He'd be an unspectacular but safe choice. I just think that if he wanted to be in SL, he would be. Only guessing, mind.

He's currently the son-in-law of his current chairman so would probably be hard to tear away.

I am only guessing but i reckon rovers and sandy have got some one lined up

I've always rated Hardman, I never understood why we didn't keep him when we had him on loan.

Some one I would like to see, although he usually plays on the wing is Chris Riley.

Simple answer was because we signed Shaun Briscoe. Hardman is a safe pair of hands but he lacks the pace to be a threat at SL level.

As Edith says, he's got his feet well under the carpet at Fev and it would take an unrealistic offer for him to come. By unrealistic, I mean significantly more than he's worth.

And he's ginger.

A fact I had overlooked. when we let him go, we had Webbo on our books, and with Welham emerging in 2008, that was our ginger quota full, so Hardman would have effectively prevented us from blooding KW.

We should have kept him!

We brought in a new 1-5 for 2008 (Briscoe, Fox, Fitzhenry, Walker and Webster). With them in place, we'd have had Cockayne and Hardman effectively filling the same role in the squad. Also, he'd already had a few years as a squad player at Saints, maybe he just wanted to play regularly?

No bad for our 1st season in SL but wouldn't want Rovers to take a step back and re-sign him.

No disrespect to your judgement but I'd say that Hardman would be a step up, the whole idea is cuckoo, anyway.

I'd forgotten about the ginger quota.

With Welham and Hodgson on the books, Riley's a no no then.

In your opinion, on what basis would he be a step up?

He can tackle.

He can now, what about 4 months after he signed?

Oh, I'm confident we can train it out of him.

IMO Hardmans not good enough for S/L. He'd of been here bye now if he was.

I believe he can be, he can also cover 1-7. It's all irrelevant, he won't leave Fev unless he fell out with his partner or her father told him to go and earn in Super league.

I'll second that, he wasnt good enough for St Helens and was only an average player with a lack of pace during the time that he was here imo, if some people on here genuinely believe he is the answer then we realy are in trouble .

St Helens had Paul Wellens and we had Shaun Briscoe, now we're facing the prospect of Hall (in some fans eyes) at FB, Hardman is a better choice IMO.

He might possibly the less of two evils given the choice between the two but it would still be a massive step backwards imo.
In my honest opinion i doubt very much that either scenario will play out, i cannot see the club even considering these two as possibilities.