marklaspalmas

Yes, we had both Callum McLelland and Jake Sweeting at Rovers. They're both still young and worth keeping tabs on. I thought McLelland looked ok but he had a lot of injuries. Their team did lose at home to Cornwall today.

Good shout! He may be worth another look.

Harold Box David Dyas, Mick Smith, Dave Hartley, Graham Bray John Newlove, Steve Nash Les Tonks, Keith Bridges, Billy Harris Alan Rhodes, Jimmy Thompson, Keith Bell. Subs: Dave Busfield, Charlie Stone

Yeah. The move sideways to Odsal made no sense, but I guess that was the Peter Fox influence. Took him two years to work out his mistake.

Graham Steadman. More than Deryck Fox and Paul Newlove which makes no sense, but there you go.

Which four teams make the semis? 2008 had a loaded group A with three teams to the SF, didn't it? The draw will be crucial.

I'm not convinced your idea makes 12 the "perfect number". However, it's a ten team comp. How will they make that work?

Ah yes, ta. Just looked it up. A stacked 'super group' of four then and a muddle of all sorts to get some semifinals. Urgh.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but how will a ten team competition be organised? Was it 1995 when there were groups of 4, 3 and 3? It's a difficult number.

I hope you don't mind Gazza, but I changed the title of this useful thread.

Superb value that offer

I rate England and I thought he was v.good v Halifax. A Bateman-style player, not the biggest, but a scrapper, a disrupter and a tough competitor. You've got to expect a few penalties, but I like him in the team.

All average signings but to be honest the "hype" was pretty muted with all these players, wasn't it? Four of those players were simply a punt on ageing players at their last club, and the other an unknown aussie.

Probably worth a thread in its own right. I think expectations play a huge part. Leo Casey was a solid enough prop, but the large transfer fee created an expectation he couldn't libe up to. Etu Uaisele was a decent NRL winger and looked the part, but never really settled. Ryan Verlinden's reputation just got bigger and bigger the longer we waited for his visa. Disappointment was bound to follow. Tales of Joey Leilua's amazing pay packet created an unrealistic sense of what he'd do. Cam King, Nu Brown had injury histories and so perhaps seemed relatively unheralded. They were allowed to settle and get on with it. As has been said, Brett Daunt had an impossible act to follow, but Mark Aston's transfer was set up to fail. With Currier, the injury was unlucky, and he was nowhere near the same level as the player he replaced. But who was? We'd have been better grabbing an import like Greg Austin or Iva Ropati with no transfer fee and making do. But the pressure was on the club to make a big statement.

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it