Sounds positive, but I will hold off my excitement until Paea has signed and I see who the two players are, they must be strike players to give us something different.

Hopefully Pritchard will be one.

Can put one coaching rumour to bed for now, Noble has finally signed for London as a 'mentor' to Andrew Henderson.

Phew!
That's a relief!!!

Id give a pound to a shilling that we sign another prop

If Paea and stays and we sign Taylor, a prop is not a position we need IMO.

A backrower is far more important, a backrow of Mini, Thompson, Westy and Ellis is powerful and hardworking, but is really missing the a dynamic edge.

Thats unless we use Sa in the backrow and sign two centres, one from overseas and one from SL (Bridge, Sarginson etc)

Also looks certain that the marquee rule will come into play next season, their is no homegrown player in our squad worth using it on, so which overseas and position will it be used for?

If you're going to pay over the odds for an overseas 'Marquee signing' it has to be in a position where they'd make a difference. For us it would have to be at hooker. With Sneyd signed up long term and HTW & Dean developing very nicely in the academy we don't need a HB, then with Shaul & Naughton we don't really need a FB either.

Don't like the idea of this marquee signing rule. Essentially we're going to be paying over the odds just for the same kind of players that were coming over a few years ago anyway.

I personally wouldn't, I think we have two good hookers in our squad and if they are used correctly would work very well together.

Plus spenign big money on a player that will only play 40 minutes doesn't make good financial sense.

I'd use it to sign a centre.

I'm not convinced by it either.

Stop it. I'm going for a lie down.

Depends how its used. We will see owners with brains do really well with it.

There are many options, it dopesnt just mean "paying over the odds for an Aussie who was "coming anyway"" .

The Marquee player could be our top earner, say £120k comes off the cap, then it enables us to put that £120k into other players to retain them, to stop Saints Wire etc offering them more.

It doesnt have to be Aussie or Kiwi, it could be a RU player from anywhere.

It could be a player from another club, any nationality, I'd assume Roby wont be Saints super earner, but we could me him the top dog, and Saints couldnt compete (insert other names, Roby is only an example)

Dont be so quick to dismiss it.