We must have shipped the best part of a full side eastwards along the m62 over the last few years

There may be an offer on the table for Sutcliffe now which means we can plan for next year knowing additional cap space has been made available. That offer might not have been their in the summer. Obtaining a competent short term replacement while creating capacity to plan sounds like effective management to me. Its not going to cost us winning the competition is it!

Am I missing something?

Sutcliffe isn't a centre whilst I have a hole in my backside. He's the poor man's Joel Tomkins.

We have one specialist, experienced centre in Newman. That's it.

Gildart may not be the actual answer, but at least he's an actual centre and we aren't plugging that gap with the likes of Briscoe, Martin, Mellor, Donaldson or Sutcliffe.

Let's also not forget that pre-Covid, Sutcliffe had agreed a deal with Cas, only for them to pull the plug and he stayed with us.

This is nothing new.

Sutcliffe is more a centre than he is any other position.

Which says it all. He's a dreadful centre.

No pace, can't pass and can't tackle.

I cannot see how the finances or logic of this add up. I get Sutcliffe leaving early but what's the point of bringing Gildart in? We're not going to be challenging for the title so why not just get Edwards back from York and give him the rest of the year in the squad.

Or is this Gildart deal so amazing that it costs us even less than taking an academy player back into our cap? That I find hard to believe - and even then it's still pointless.

I'm not a big fan of Sutcliffe but that is a way over the top comment.

Sutcliffe has ability, and he shows it in flashes. His biggest defect is that he's shown time and again that he's a fair-weather player - when the team as a whole is playing well he looks pretty good, but when we're not and we need someone to stand up and make a difference he's either nowhere to be seen or makes awful decisions. He's played close to 200 games. How many games has he genuinely made a difference between a win and a loss? Despite his flaws at least Brad Dwyer can probably point to half a dozen games he's helped carve out a win.

Anyone can look good in attack in the recent games under Smith. Virtually nobody in our squad has shown they can help drag us out of a mess. Where was Sutcliffe (and a fair few others) when we were enduring our worst start to the season for decades? Same as always, waiting for someone else to do something.

Two incoming apparently

When ?