Well, if we are going to change the car I don't think we should buy a British one. And we certainly can not afford a new model from Oz, which means a second hand one from someone like Sheila's Sydney Bangers.com. Alternatively we could ditch the car and use the wife's runaround for a few months in the hope we can pick up a bargain somewhere else. Our current set of wheels appears to have a couple of flat tyres, no water in the radiator, no navigational system, and the MOT is due at the end of the year - time for some forward planning methinks.

So please tell us all who you would have bought in the current climate. We would all love to know

Regarding Tony Smith it is certainly a big year for him at the Wire next season and if things don't work out too well it could trigger a merry go round on the coaching front

An ex Hull FC player told me that Radford is in the same boat too and that if things don't improve there then they have earmarked Tony Smith to take over



If Tony Smith does leave then i would imagine that Daryl Powell will be the next Wire coach although it will cost you to get him out of his Tigers contract

Powell certainly seems to have done pretty well and gets the most from his squad(s). Would we be better getting an Aussie in though ? Wait until we see who is released from down under ? The Oz game looks to be very structured. They 'play the odds' and 'hunt the error' which is an anathema to us. I must admit I don't fancy watching robots, I like free flowing rugby and seeing players chance their arm from time to time. But I also wan't to see our coaches going through set moves with the players on the training ground, and if the stats show charge-downs as being unproductive, I would hope the coach eliminates them. And most of all I would like to see forward planning with the squad such that we replace ageing players progressively rather than having to bring in 9 new players at the end of the season.



I think the close season recruitment was as good as could be achieved. Even if you have money though, you may not attract the best players because they wan't success as well, and we have fallen out of the top 4 atm. The players that we have brought in though look much stronger to me than last year, so unlike quite a few people on here I am expecting a top four finish and the sniff of a final. But yes, as we approach the end of next season the choice of coach for 2017 will be crucial. As Tony Smith once said, every coach has his shelf life.

I think the point being made is that with careful succession planning you don't need to have to buy 8 news players in one off season and be subject to what's available. Instead project where the replacements are going to be needed on a 2 to 3 year time frame and plan your recruitment around that with 2/3 changes per season.



Bailey is a good example. Leeds no longer deem him good enough for them and get shut. We snap him up after failing to get our real targets. Result is we are buying players that are not good enough for those teams we aspire to compete with. How is that going to work - already we are at a disadvantage.

What the club have been guilty of is hanging onto some of the older players too long in the hope of winning more silverware but the idea didn't work out. As for lack of succession planning ,that was taken care of by the dismantling of the Academy system & left us & a number of other clubs with under 19s & flawed dual registration to work with. As a result promising under 23s had to move on because they couldn't stay with their parent clubs.

Yet, we have players those teams we aspire to compete with want. Swings and roundabouts.

Hill, Clark and possibly Currie... so not many.

I think you miss my point. Having players (maybe we have 3) that other sides covet is very different than signing players deemed no longer good enough for their club.

Not his biggest fan but ratchford is highly coveted, I think lineham would also be wanted by some big clubs along with sandow, gidley and Dodds. Leeds were sniffing around westerman and potentially Hughes would be wanted by some as well. Add those to Clark hill and currie and it doesn't look too shabby.

I agree with this but also think we did more of this forward planning than people give credit for, what did for us was some of the players we forward planned for didn't turn out as we would have expected.



The common criticism is that we didn't plan for Briers' retirement. As Briers entered his 30s the next young star British halfback was supposed to be Richie Myler, so we signed him. But then the feeling was perhaps there was a better one at Salford and we'd signed the wrong one because Ratchford was better. So we signed him as well. Plus there was a lot of excitement about Gareth O'Brien coming through. As it turned out Myler and O'Brien weren't right and Ratchford whilst a good player is maybe not a like for like replacement. But the idea was correct.



In other positions I think we faced a trade off, because we had a very good team but a lot of players were of a similar age. We could have started dismantling the team early or we could have let it go through to its full potential and see what it could achieve. We chose the latter which meant we had a harder job down the line but I still think that was a fair choice. The team probably peaked in 2011 but we still had a Challenge Cup win and two Grand Final appearances after that - if a bit of luck had gone differently on those days at OT we could have had two Grand Final wins, the team was good enough, and it would have been a shame to break it up early and lose that chance.



Maybe the lesson going forward is that when you build a team in the first place, watch that the age of the players isn't all around the same. I liked our recruitment from 2006 to 2011 but with hindsight we did sign too many players in their late 20s or early 30s.



But still I don't want to complain too much as having seen Warrington for two decades before, that team from 2009 to 2013 was a privilege to watch and I expect as I get older and nostalgia kicks in that will be one of the all time great teams.

Yes, we discussed this ? 2 years ago. It always seemed a strange situation to me to be running with such an ageing team, particularly as we know Moran is a stickler for professionalism and forward planning. There could have been several reasons why we never brought in [idirect [/ireplacements; the expectation that our youth system and Myler type purchases would come through, pressure on Smith to deliver and hence run with his old stars until they really were totally spent, pressure from Moran for the club to be self-financing (hence the youth system to provide the next generation). But for whatever reason, we did not replace like for like and so here we are with what feels like a panic reaction and heavy purchase of players in the pre-season. But the coach carries the can for what happens on the field - perhaps with the exception of Leeds where uncle Gary runs everything. And I can remember asking whether Smith could do an 'Alex Fergusson' and rebuild a team from the ashes of the old. We now know the answer to that one, the new question is whether he can meld together the new players and motivate the squad to get Wire back into the top four before he departs at the end of the season. With his legacy and personal pride at stake I suspect we will have a pretty good season.