Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Mon Oct 09, 2023 2:13 pm  

Could be a few Fev players available after yesterday's result. On their forum, they're saying some playings were on a £100k!!

For me I'd be looking at a Scrum half, so Lilley can go in at Hooker. Plus a back up Hooker to Lilley (Please god don't let us be thinking Hallas is one of our two main Hookers)

As above poster said we need a goal-kicker too as Lilley isn't consistent enough.

Greg--surely fax aren't looking at letting Keyes go for Widdop as that would be a crazy decision. Even if Keyes stays, O'Brien and Widdop is some wage in an area you're already strong in IMHO

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Mon Oct 09, 2023 2:39 pm  

My thoughts entirely, I think a move for Widdop would be madness when its so obvious that we need improvements elsewhere and its unlikely he would come cheap and like you say Bull Mania, we are already pretty strong there. I just can't see Widdop coming and us keeping our current 1/6/7 due to money.

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Mon Oct 09, 2023 6:35 pm  

Keyes is a class act, just very injury prone.
You can more or less guarantee he will not be playing 25% of the time.

So glad to have got rid of poison Patton, one of the root causes of our $hit 2022 campaign.
The season started to come good after he'd done one.

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Mon Oct 09, 2023 10:20 pm  

Alex sutcliffe might be with a shout strength in depth?

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:34 am  

Does specific recruitment matter if we're not full-time? The part-time payer pool is competent and we can grab our fair share of good players, but they're not exceptional players in the context of this level. It seems to me at least that the next logical step for us as a club, in terms of visible progress is to retain our academy prospects and allow them and the wider squad to go full-time, and compete at the right end of the championship next year pre-grading.

Cue all the cloth cutting responses

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:42 am  

Dutch Bull wrote:

Does specific recruitment matter if we're not full-time? The part-time payer pool is competent and we can grab our fair share of good players, but they're not exceptional players in the context of this level. It seems to me at least that the next logical step for us as a club, in terms of visible progress is to retain our academy prospects and allow them and the wider squad to go full-time, and compete at the right end of the championship next year pre-grading.

Cue all the cloth cutting responses

A lot of the players we have may not have the want or inclination to go full time gill for instance because he has a good job outside of the sport

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Tue Oct 10, 2023 11:01 am  

Pyrah123 wrote:

A lot of the players we have may not have the want or inclination to go full time gill for instance because he has a good job outside of the sport

That's a fair point but if by some sort of miracle we had beat Tolouse, then A.N Other to get promotion we wouldn't have had a team so would as the newly promoted team nearly always done sign then majority of Wakefields squad which wern't good enough to stay up...

Hate to say it but Degsy did it right on the third attempt, created a mid table SL team playing in the championship so when promotion came they hit the ground running.

Can't see our current culture, of scrimping and employing volunteers (god bless them) allowing this..
Hence dare I say it we need new big money investor or backer.
Once we are up we hopefully will be able to entice the old fans back, something Leigh can't. why would you support Leigh when your from Wigan?
Had the same convo about FEV this morning, even in SL who would wake up one morning and think I fancy starting supporting Featherstone?

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Tue Oct 10, 2023 11:06 am  

bowlingboy wrote:

That's a fair point but if by some sort of miracle we had beat Tolouse, then A.N Other to get promotion we wouldn't have had a team so would as the newly promoted team nearly always done sign then majority of Wakefields squad which wern't good enough to stay up...

Hate to say it but Degsy did it right on the third attempt, created a mid table SL team playing in the championship so when promotion came they hit the ground running.

Can't see our current culture, of scrimping and employing volunteers (god bless them) allowing this..
Hence dare I say it we need new big money investor or backer.
Once we are up we hopefully will be able to entice the old fans back, something Leigh can't. why would you support Leigh when your from Wigan?
Had the same convo about FEV this morning, even in SL who would wake up one morning and think I fancy starting supporting Featherstone?

Thats meant to say big money investor or new owner....which as it happens Wakefield now do,

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Tue Oct 10, 2023 12:41 pm  

For me the issue when full time we attracted show ponies like the drivel we had when first relegated.

Messing about expecting the badge to carry them to victory whilst routinely getting beaten by the players they looked down on.

To go full time needs serious SL type budget with player who you can assure will be retained if you go up.

I can't see Niggle and co attracting that kind of money so would we prefer a top end part-time team like we have or highly paid journeymen stealing a living.

And I suppse you have to have that budget for several years incase you do a Fev.....

That sounds harsh and and I never thought I'd say it but as an example - Patten

Re: 2024 Squad and Recruitment : Tue Oct 10, 2023 2:13 pm  

What Leigh did was once in a lifetime sort of stuff where the stars align perfectly. People forget that by the time the season started they didn't have much of a squad assembled, losing early doors to Fev, then a number of players became available for different reasons and with SL teams already up to their quota limits and the Championship having a loophole it all worked out perfectly for them. If a team in our division had that sort of money now it would still be a struggle to put together a team capable of staying up simply because of the lack of player availability.