It is never a case of yes or no but how much money. Emmitt is a good player but Saints cannot afford to pay silly amounts of money for players, especially when at the time they were trying hard to keep Roby, Graham and Eastmond. Castleford really wanted him so they stumped up the cash.
Our front row is ten times better than last year down to the signings of LMS and Perry. Even though they have not played as much as we wanted they have still been better than Bryn and Fozzard. Emmitt was a stand out player in 2010 but in a well beated front row. It is hard to offer good money to player who plays in a teams weakest position. Jake also probably knew that he was likely to be 4th/5th in the pecking order at Saints while at Cas' he is 1st. More money and regular game time is a no brainer, so you cannot blame him for that.
Paul Johnson is a solid player and we already have plenty of them so I have no issues with him going.
I am surprised more people do not talk about Chris Dean who did very little wrong at Saints and would have made an excellent Lee Gilmour-esk second rower. Jamie Ellis also was only given 1 fisrst team game after being very strong in the u-20s. These two players are more likely to come back and bite us on the backside than Emmitt and Johnson.
The bottom line is that there is a production line of young players coming through and the club need to make quick decisions about how good a lot of these players are going to become. We gave Ste Tyrer too bigger chance at the expense of Tom Armstrong who at the moment looks a better talent. We could end up losing him at the end of the year also due to his lack of game time.
We need to give players a fair go then assess them after a couple of years rather than uming and ahing and creating a log jam. I would like to see guys like Greenwood and Hale given a go after some very below par performances from Ashusrt and Dixon for example.
The dual registration system is something we should use more I'll agree with you on that one.
