Says much about much..., Rovers fans will always take Rovers players over anyone else, playing for Rovers automatically makes you a fantastic top class player....just look at our recent domination of RL for proof....

..yet its Leuluai and not Dobson who will be able to look at his medals and view his great finals and test matches at the end of his career..? t

JM seems to have a similar mind-set with certain players..probably why we destined to flounder around winning nothing for another 26 years...

And look at the bigger picture...the Leeds v Rovers game is a non-event already...Rovers probably battling to try and get that coveted 8th spot and first round elimination from the play-offs (but far from certain..) , does it really matter if our players get selected for the Exiles..it is at least a personal honour for the players picked...

Do you think? Buderus is captin, cant see many of our overseas players getting in and on current form not many in the england team

Not all PMH, happy to shoot the breeze anytime you like, time allowing.., just to qualify , i am just eager for Rovers to regain former glories, i feel that we had a major chance to kick on three years ago but have blown it big time due in some parts to the kind of favouritism shown on these boards...it should have been clear that some players were not and never will be capable of taking that extra step to actually winning things and the squad altered accordingly.... , instead we fell into the Hull FC trap of thinking we were almost there (the chairman once opined , having fallen under the mass hypnotism of JM, that we were "a couple of players away " from been a cup winning team) and awarding deals to anyone who once had a decent game....we have missed the boat in my opinion and our reliance on overseas players is going to hurt us...

My disappointment in all this manifests itself in what you and your associates term "negativity"....i call it realism and calling it as i see it....

Not everything in and around HKR is negative.
You only pick up the negative stuff.
Now you tell me how does that look?

Fair enough - but do you not think that that disappointment reflects a possibly unrealistic level of expectation? The slope gets steeper the nearer you get to the peak. We may well be entering a new cycle, but to have built from aiming no higher than survival to finishing 7th, 4th (or 6th) and 7th (or 6th) is pretty good IMO. We're a more attractive option, I imagine, for players than we when the foundations of this squad were laid, ahead of the 2008 season.
Why is our past and current reliance on overseas players going to hurt us in the future? I don't see any logical reason it should do, relative to if we'd signed similar British players in their places - or do you mean an over-reliance on senior players, limiting opportunities for youngsters? While I'd still disgree, the latter is at least a logical point.

Thanks for the stereotyping, I feel like I have been placed on a pedestal! For the benefit of attempting to educate your good self I will explain. Michael Dobson is perhaps the only player in the current Rovers squad who I think would be capable of holding down a spot in the Wigan team, maybe a fully fit Clint Newton may have a shot, but the rest ain't good enough.

Please don't use the medal count theory as a measure of comparison for player abilities, it's demeaning. Leuluai may have won a GF medal last year, so he should, he's surrounded by significantly better players than Dobson. That doesn't automatically make Wigan's entire 1-17 better than anyone else without a medal. Mutley used to get medals all the time from Dick Dastardly, but there were (and are) better dogs around (both real and cartoon versions).

The Leeds v Rovers game may be a non-event to you, I suspect 15-16,000 paying spectators may have a different opinion. Perhaps we should cancel the rest of the season for anyone currently not in the top 4?

What part of the team id like to see play didnt you understand dipstick.
I included Vella because its proberbly his last season and it would be nice to see him selected after spending 5 years here.
And i would lose you inside 2 seconds if it came down to rugby knowledge any day of the week.

Fair enough, I just find it a little difficult that you can't find any achievements from the last five or so years.

After the mass clear out at the end of 2007 the team took an awful long time to find it's feet, we turned over about sixteen or so players. There's no way we could do that every season. We also had to pay more than most other clubs (probably) to attract players to us in the first place, players are going to come to us and stay with us for less money as they are reported to do at Leeds.

Maybe we have missed the boat, I'd prefer to see it as gradual development. With a fair wind and a decent draw this team could challenge for the Challenge Cup.

I suppose the next couple of seasons will give us the answers, as the quota is reduced either our youngsters come through and Hudgell and Morgan's plan will either bare fruition or as you suspect, they will have failed.

Baffled by the way this thread has gone...

Suppose back on topic of the Exiles squad and the benefits of Luluia and Dobson, Luluai isn;t a 7, he's a 9 who plays a bit of 7. IIRC in a fully fit squad he plays 9 for wigan and also played 9 for NZ.

Not sure if I'm reading the comments correctly but, Larry are you saying you don;t think Michael Dobson is good enough for us,? I could understand where your coming from witha number of our other players but this arguement I'm afraid I just don;t get.

If I understand you correctly you're saying we don;t have one player who is good enough, can I ask who you think is???

but, but, but dream team scrum half