NickyKiss wrote:
We also have an issue with losing players to other superleague clubs as well having lost Hansen and now Goulding and probably Taylor who are three players I'd still like in our squad. We have also lost Green and whilst you always accept it because he's from overseas clubs like Leeds and Wire have managed to hold on to sought after Aussies players like Delaney and Joel Monaghan.
I full agree that you're going to lose the odd one, that's only natural but you can't lose the amount of players we have without you having an issue. To lose them to Union/NRL is a nuisance but understandable but as the biggest club in the UK and current double holders I don't expect to be losing lads to Hull and Salford especially when we must have salary cap space lying around from those departures to the NRL.
When Goulding goes next year we'll have about 2 or 3 players left from our Grand Final team of 2010 and maybe 3 or 4 from the CC win of 2011. That's scary and in a couple of years we'll be saying similar about the double winning team of 2013. We've proved that we can cope with a large turnover of players once from 2010-2013 for example but that won't continue to be the case I'm afraid especially if the juniors start getting picked off as rumoured (with moves in place for Sutton and possibly Burgess as well as rumoured interest in Hampshire).
I agree, I just think when you pick the bones of this situation it is nowhere near as bad as some make out. For every Pat Richards or Joel Monaghan who've stayed at a SL club for many years there's been a Greg Eastwood or Ryan Hoffman who've looked for the first ticket back as soon as they've got a sniff of an offer back home. Some players like Pat, Tommy and Green have given a good few years of service playing over here and want another crack at proving themselves in the NRL.
I didn't want to lose Hansen and I don't want us to lose Taylor but the former got a ridiculous offer to go to Salford and the latter seems to have personal reasons for wanting to move back to his home town. The same with Goulding, he's shown some patchy form this year (though some would have you believe we're losing Mark Gasnier in his prime) and it's been decided that we have better options and to use his salary elsewhere. Only time will tell if that's the correct decision or not. A similar decision was probably made with Chris Tuson.
Look at the 2010 squad: Carmont, Coley, Fielden, Riddell, Deacon, Prescott are long retired and Feka and Gleeson are well past their best. It was a fairly ageing squad. Only Tomkins, Hansen and Leuluai would be anywhere near our first team squad 4 years later.
If all of a sudden we see a genuine exodus of a lot of our young British players then we can start to worry, but I honestly don't think that is the case right now. I just take issue with people making out it's only happening to us.