What if we signed Clifford again and he breaks his leg pre season. As another poster has said, Abdul had a very disrupted pre season due to off field issues and has only missed one game this season, which is better than justvabout every player in our squad.

Third middle might not have been the best choice of words replying to JTP original post

I think people are also forgetting by the time the investment came though and Smith went, alot if the good domestic players were gone. I think our domestic signings have been ok.

The key is the quality of quota players we sign, we need 7 the quality of Ese Ese or better.

this whole "he's not costing much in the salary cap so is a good signing" stance is fine if he wasn't one of our first choice options. We won't sign another half so are depending on him being available. I've lost count of how many seasons have been ruined by us not having fit halfbacks and playing hookers, centres etc. there. Our most successful recent period was when we had sneyd available pretty much every week.

Unfortunately, we seem to be the worst team in SL for signing half backs who are always injured.

dykes
seymour
kelly
head
reynolds
gale.
trueman

Year after year we pin our hopes on players who can't get regularly on the pitch in the most critical position in the team and I have no confidence that abdul will suddenly shake off his injury problems and pay more than about half the games next year. Compounded by trueman and waker also being in our spine

I get what you are saying but I think that would very difficult given salary cap limitations.

I agree though after signing solid domestic players mainly due to the timing of the investment the quality of the quota players is absolutely crucial.

Broken legs can happen to any player. Clifford would offer more than Abdul. Clifford actually criticised training for being too easy - do you think Abdul would do the same?

I'd bet that Ockunbor and Ese Ese are probably on around the same monet, both similar NRL profile last couple of years.

Carlos will be on more than both two. Think we will have a massive amount to play with

.

I hope so but given where we are at the moment we may have to pay over the odds in terms of salary and length of contract like we did with Asiata.

Clifford doesn't want to be at Hull, Abdull does so it's a no brainer.

Different regime for next year though isn't it. The players might be having an easy time now. Sounds like Cartwright will put a rocket up them when he gets here in a few months