Wesley Bruines has been released the club decided not to take up the option to extend. Jake Thewlis as had the option on him taken up to extend

Is anyone else a bit underwhelmed by our recruitment so far? The 3 signed already are just squad fillers / projects ( no disrespect)
I know we have a lot of good youth coming through such as Hayes, Lindop, Holroyd, Wood, Taylor Wray etc but i still believe we need to strengthen on top. Unless the plan is to just have another experimental / building year whereby we see if these youngsters are good enough. As i expect them to feature more. To me i like the ‘next man up’ mentality and am happy with another year of building but i also don’t want to get left behind because we are sat on lots of free cap space. St Helens found this out the hard way recently by not recruiting and pinning success on the youngsters. Albeit there youngsters haven’t cut the mustard so far where as our look more promising.

Supposedly our only signing for next year was going to be yates prior to the nicholson news.

We've already had him, and arguably he isn't enough.

If we were trying to sign Cleary that would indicate we have quite a bit of cap space spare.

Not necessarily loads as only 150k would count on the cap, so not neccessarily shed loads of cap space. Maybe Cleary and 2 more signings really. But with who we have signed i think we still have cap space for another 1 at best.
But yeah i'm a bit underwhelmed, BUT we have the nucleus of the squad set and good enough to get to the playoffs. I think Leyland is a genuine step up from Drinkwater, and Hayes has room to get better also.
Russell i hope just had a dodgy game for PNG, and a full pre-season and some game time will kick him in to gear, as he's a big dude so could add some strike for us.
I would have liked a new big boy prop, but it looks like Bullock will have to find his early 2023 form and fill that spot.
Our new painter and decorator is only a development signing anyway so i'm not concerned with his signing for the first team, He might get a game or 2 on the wing or not.
We might be banking any cap space we have left incase a player becomes available during the season?

Only £150k is that a marquee signing? You make fair points but I must admit when I read "we have the nucleus of the squad set and good enough to get to the playoffs" I was underwhelmed. Our target is to win the title surely?

Generally underwhelmed yes, although as FMC rightly points out, we should remember that Yates is actually a 2025 signing who we managed to get in early. In terms of how our recruitment will be viewed, much rests on how good, or not, Russell turns out to be.

If Russell does turn-out to be a dud there is the option of returning Currie to the 2nd row and playing Yates at loose forward.

It`s not something that I am advocating for, but in my opinion Yates is a better 13 than prop and we have quite a few middles to cover his absence there.

Yates may be a better 13 than a prop but I am not convinced he is a better 13 than Currie.

Yes, I agree with you, but if Russell doesn`t make the grade, it`s an option to move Yates to 13.

But hopefully Burgess knows what he is doing & Russell surprises us all by taking the chance that he has been given.