Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 2:34 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

Since Royce Simmons helped coach him down under

He did? If that is true I'd be a tad more confident about it. But I can't recall Royce working with anyone but Wests and I don't remember Lance playing for anyone but the Warriors?

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 2:45 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

He did? If that is true I'd be a tad more confident about it. But I can't recall Royce working with anyone but Wests and I don't remember Lance playing for anyone but the Warriors?

Royce was first team coach at Penrith in 1997 but as for working with Lance I am not sure when he had the opportunity, but I have to admit I think Royce has said it before.

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 3:30 pm  

I don't think Saints can play Wellens at FB, he was awful in the semi final and just offers no injection of pace and he cannot create anything. The modern FB HAS TO to do that.

Personally I would do the same with Lomax as we have with Tomkins. Take the pressure off him, take the responsability of organising and kicking away from him and put him at FB to let his running game tear teams appart. FB is an extra half-back in the modern game anyway.

I think Gaskell and LH combination has a good balance about it.

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 3:32 pm  

Chris Saint wrote:

Royce was first team coach at Penrith in 1997 but as for working with Lance I am not sure when he had the opportunity, but I have to admit I think Royce has said it before.

I just remember Royce saying he had worked with him before, and with our two other new recruits as well.

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 5:39 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

And can you tell me exactly how Saints had any say in the decisions of Jammer, Eastmond and Pryce? They were all out of contract and all free agents as a result. Saints made it clear that they had offered Jammer the 'best deal ever', they offered Eastmond and Pryce deals which they thought reflected their value. These three all want to do different things with their lives than play for Saints. That's a fact. And there is sod all that Saints can do about it short of chaining them all in a darkened room somewhere.

However, Saints could have done nothing and we would have no experienced halfback at all by now. Thankfully they didn't and they planned for the eventuality of having no experienced halfback by bringing in an experienced halfback who Royce has actually worked with and knows, making life easier all round in terms of him (Hohaia) settling in and blending with the team. Saints controlled what they could control and did their best in those areas they couldn't.

Wouldn't it have been common sense to replace them tho?

I've known for best part of a month that Leon was going so I'd imagine the club knew a long time ago. We should have acted earlier and replaced him with a stand off.

We've known both eastmond and jammer was going fir a good while and I'd expect the club to have known a long time before.


So we've had time to search for good quality replacements.

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 6:00 pm  

We surely have to go

1 Lomax

6 Hohia
7 Gaskell

As per usual that makes a decent attacking trio [especially when you throw in Robes at 9] but we will be incredibly thread bare - Injury to one of those and we are reliant on Wheeler who is no game machine himself

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 6:25 pm  

St pete wrote:

Wouldn't it have been common sense to replace them tho?

We have replaced them. We will be getting another big bloke. All is fine with the world.

What did you want? Some NRL million dollar player? Dream on.

I've known for best part of a month that Leon was going so I'd imagine the club knew a long time ago. We should have acted earlier and replaced him with a stand off.

We have oodles of stand offs at the club.

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:37 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

We have oodles of stand offs at the club.

non are close to leon as yet

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:42 pm  

Saint Simon wrote:

non are close to leon as yet

Nope, although I would like to see Gary Wheeler actually get an extended run there - ha! - as I think he could be the closest. But 'yet' does not mean 'never' and we have Hohaia coming into the halves to bring experience to the team in that position and I'm not as doom and gloom as a lot of other people appear to be.

Re: Au reviour Leon - Where do we go from here? : Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:48 pm  

To be fair having a lesser standard of playing roster isn't going to mean that you are not going to be capable of winning things, I just look at other clubs including us and think that the standards are going to drop across the board apart from maybe at Catalans.

Wigan... losing Madge(Massive IMO), Hoffman, Coley, Deacon?. Big losses IMO and no new signings YET!
Warrington... Morley??? questions marks over his future. Briers is another year older, louis anderson, solomona(another off season on the pies!) J Monaghan? Hodgson a year older.
Leeds... well they signed richard Moore FGS
Catalans are the only ones I can see being significantly better that this..

I am willing to be contridicted by the way.