The Phantom Horseman

James Lockwood's return confirmed as well.

And this was the play that got him a lot of coverage at the WC...

This certainly fits the bill of what we have been looking for as a strong middle. Reminds me a bit in build and playing style of another PNG prop, Makali Aizue

Rovers have announced the signing of PNG forward Mackenzie Yei. https://www.featherstonerovers.co.uk/news/rovers-add-power-and-experience-to-the-pack-g4Are/

Will probably depend on whether we've announced the squad numbers by then, we usually have by the opening pre-season game though this is earlier than some previous years. Either way you should at least be able to spot Lacans as he's several inches shorter than everyone else. Tackles well above his weight though.

Better late than never I suppose! As meaningless as pre-season tends to be up to a point - we all remember the world-beating Bastian pre-season - it serves its purpose. Reminds us that the new season is looming, helps get the players match-fit, allows new partnerships to be tried out, and provides a boost to the club's coffers. Let's hope for the odd promising sign and more importantly no major injuries.

I'll have a stab at a Toulouse line-up as their squad stands 1 Olly Ashall-Bott 2 Latrell Schaumkel 3 Matthieu Jussaume/Guy Armitage 4 Reuben Rennie 5 Paul Marcon 6 Jake Shorrocks 7 Josh Ralph 8 Harrison Hansen 9 Eloi Pelissier 10 Sitaleki Akauola 11 Dominique Peyroux 12 Maxime Stefani 13 Anthony Marion 14 Lambert Belmas 15 Calum Gahan 16 Joe Bretherton 17 Hugo Pezet That's not a bad 17 by any means for the Championship, about a dozen of them featured regularly in SL this season, but they have also lost a lot of quality players and as things stand they are going to dependent on their reserves/youngsters for depth. They will have the advantage of being full time though.

I've only seen Evans play a couple of times but he caused Fev all sorts of problems in the game up at Haven.

There's a few clubs that will have plenty to say about that, Harry. Will be surprising if we are not one of the stronger teams once again, but we looked to have a strong squad last year yet didn't reach the final and we have a rookie head coach, so it's no wonder fans of plenty of other teams are fancying their chances, especially with a play-off system.

Am half thinking we need separate threads for SL/Championship (or L1) but here's a stab at how Fev might line up, though bear in mind we might not have finished recruitment yet. 1 Caleb Aekins (Kheirallah out injured until at least April) 2 Luke Briscoe 3 Joey Leilua 4 Chris Hankinson 5 Craig Hall 6 Johnathan Ford 7 Thomas Lacans/Riley Dean 8 Craig Kopczak 9 Matty Wildie 10 Junior Moors 11 Josh Hardcastle 12 Brad Day 13 Elijah Taylor subs 14 Connor Jones 15 Jack Bussey 16 Matthieu Cozza 17 Gadwin Springer also available: John Davies, James Lockwood, Luke Cooper, Brandon Pickersgill, Tyla Hepi, Gareth Gale, Dan Fleming.

I certainly agree with your last comment, but he was told he was being released by Catalans several months ago, before the World Cup and presumably before IMG made their comments about wanting the French teams to have more French players. From his own interview it doesn't sound like any other SL teams came in for him - he mentions one Championship team and some Elite 1 outfits. Whether he adapts to RU or not we'll have to see, but you can understand why someone who's 6'9" might feel that sport is more suitable for him, partly because of his obvious potential in the line-outs, but also because like some other really tall RL players seem to do, he can clearly struggle with his defence.

No, I'm doing my bit to confound the stereotype that English people can't learn foreign languages! It's quite fun reading the French RL forums and realising that we don't have a monopoly on moaning about the RFL...

He said in an interview with a French website that he had offers from Elite 1 plus 1 "very interesting" offer from the Championship.

If you mean Josh Ralph, he's signed for Toulouse.

You're the one going out on a limb by even bringing up the subject that it might. Genuinely not sure if I'm missing some attempt at humour or if you really thought Man Of Kent's post was suggesting they were going to abruptly turf a SL club out in February.

You seem to have assumed that this would take place prior to the 2023 season for some reason.

So for instance, when Gledhill says in that podcast "the big rumour is, a championship club will be replacing a SL club", there are lots of questions that he should be asked eg 1) Who told you that rumour? 2) How can it have any substance when nobody knows what the actual criteria are going to be yet let alone the grading?

It's worth pointing out too that all the discussion in that Full 80 minutes podcast is based on the premise briefly touched on by Mick Gledhill that a lot of the aspects of the current ROI model will transfer to the IMG model. That seemed to be based on one comment to him from the new chair of RFL Commercial, but there's not much meat put on the bones of what could have been one throwaway comment. It's also worth pointing out that when Gledhill talks about rumours or hearsay a heavy dose of salt is advised.

They're not, and nobody, including in this thread, has suggested otherwise.

No I agree, though I don't think Hepi played quite as well for us as he had for Toulouse, he's undersized but not a bad player on his day. I said I was a bit puzzled about the Fleming signing at the time, the only thing I can think of is that there's such a shortage of middles for all clubs that we just wanted to get as much depth at the position signed up as possible, go on every forum and you'll barely find one where they aren't saying they're short of props/middles. To be honest I'll be surprised if either is a regular in the 17 this year barring injury (and I think Hepi might have an injury himself).

No you're not wrong, the actual quote from Jesse in that TotalRL piece was “I needed clarity for my future and at the time Featherstone couldn’t give me an answer and I had to go looking but it fell in to place the move to Sheffield. “It was timing as well with Sheffield being the right option.” The link to that piece is https://www.totalrl.com/jesse-sene-lefao-reveals-why-he-left-featherstone-rovers-and-his-relationship-with-ex-leeds-rhinos-boss-brian-mcdermott/ He never mentioned any of the players that have been inserted into his actual quote.

Indeed, but it's worth pointing out how misleading that line is as quoted in that post with the missing punctuation, it makes it look like it was Jesse himself who was describing it as sad and silly that he didn't get retained when Locky etc did.

I genuinely think there's at least a chance that one of those outlets was first alerted to the story on here.

indeed! You'd like to think he's made a phone call or something for this article though as it does actually attempt to provide a news update, rather than going for a "5 Possible Destinations For Joey Leilua"-type speculation piece.

A timely update from League Express... https://www.totalrl.com/joey-leilua-staying-at-featherstone-rovers-despite-sizeable-super-league-offer/