No1 Saint wrote:
We need to clear the decks for next year and give Brown a chance to shape the squad how he wants. We need to start making the calls on players that we dont want to renew, if some of them are playing for a RL future they might even buck up!
For me
Wello - retire
Gardner - release
Meli - release
TP - release
Perry - release
Hiho - try desperately to sell to the NRL
Gaskell - release
Howarth - dont care
Laffranchi - release
We then need to sign up the clubs future by giving long term deals to Walmsley and Percival for starters - 2 outstanding talents who will be hunted by the NRL and other Superleague clubs in the near future. If we make the calls to let people go we will know exactly what we have to spend and we can start the recruitment process as early as possible. For all the doom and gloom (me being part of that) I feel we have some very talented players still but we need to recruit wisely to get back in the hunt for trophies.
I would hope we don't do this. Telling players they can go is exactly what put us over a barrel with Eastmond. If we tell all those players they are gone and advertise this, then when we go shopping for replacements, we will have to pay over the odds leaving us short of cap space for a proper squad.
It's fine for us as fans to advertise who we want and do not want. But the club and the coach need to play their cards closer to their chests. Sign the best player you can for next year on the least money you can and then tell others they are surplus to requirements.
If we say that we are losing 3 of our starting props to the whole of SL. Any prop getting an offer from us is immediately going to think I can get some more money out of these guys as they are so short for next year, they need to take me.
Any scrum half we approach already knows this, so we don't need the props doing the same, otherwise we will end up with far too much money in far too few positions.
