Radford said he wants a squad. When he signed connor he mentioned how many games Shaul had already played. I honestly think as good as Shauls been he'll be under massive pressure next year. A team with big centres wingers and 2nd rows like ours need a good link man to release them. It's by far the most glaring fault in Shauls game. By lots. And the reason he wont play for england

Always used to criticise Shaul for not linking in aswell as other full backs but anyone else think it could be to do with what's going on 2 or 3 passes before it gets to him? With Dorn at Cas, the space and overlap is created for him in the middle

No. Tomkins has been gash. Come back into a team known for struggling/gash attack all year and only played half the games of Shaul and already has 3 more try assists

What makes you think we are paying him the full 175k this season? backloaded otherwise we'd still be over. Why do you think we couldn't even sign a desperate Lee Smith who we'd have got for peanuts? Why do you think we had to offload Whiting before season started? Do you really think we'll sign anyone else even despite offloading several players incl Michaels and lower salaries for some for next season and no guarantee of upratings for others (despite others rumouring such)
We are having to clear the decks to keep us under IMHO.

Ignoring all the waffle and going back to my post on Pritchard that you quoted, Pritchard is under the marquee rule this year. There are just two clubs using the marquee player allowance in 2016, us and Wigan, for Pritchard and Tomkins. Pearson has said so himself.

Why would he be registered as a marquee player this year if he's not earning £175k or more? What would be the point? We'd gain nothing from it whatsoever.

The maths bit:
The Bulldogs are paying a reported $300k of his salary this year, which exchanges roughly to £175k today. He was on a reported $650k last year at the bulldogs, so c£375k a year. That's assuming Frank didn't take a pay cut to come here, which I think is a fair assumption, and could in fact be on more than £375k (I don't know).

£375k - £175k = £200k payable by Hull FC in 2016, so using the marquee rule (£175k), £25k is exempt. if Hull pay him £6m in 2017, it's still only £175k on the cap.

The whole spiel about him being on a back-loaded contract is pure conjecture, and with the club using the Marquee rule, completely pointless in doing so.



I agree that we're having a clear out of sorts. Time will tell if it's to get us back under the cap, or if we're looking at a final signing, nobody knows yet.

Exactly this!! Dorn/Hanbury etc all get around 20 metres of space to work with and normally an overlap. The passes and lead runners we use do not leave Shaul enough space and he still has 2nd rower, Centre and Winger in the defensive line. We need to work better/quicker to take people out of the line for him to link in effectively

Again this. Why some are trying to pin the blame on Shaul for this is bizarre, it's the job of our half backs to create the space for him to be effective. That's where the problem lies.

I can see both sides really. He generally doesn't get enough time, certainly much less time than Hanbury and Dorn seem to get in their sides, and often he gets lined up by the defence due to the slow time it takes to get him the ball. There could be an element of it down to his positioning too.

But there is the other side of his game that he squanders opportunities to put others in. Wakefield last week for example he decided to take it on himself, where a short ball to the right would've surely seen a try. It could be a confidence thing, or just poor decision making. Saying that, for every one of those, there's a try he's scored from nothing.

He's had a cracking season though, and if this is the only part of his game we're nit-picking about, we've got a pretty decent player on our hands.

Not pinning nothing on him. But looking ahead we'll need to improve further to stay ahead. If you cant see its a weakness then that's yours. I'll bet it's not gone un noticed by the coaches
Fullbacks with more assists than Shaul this year
O brien
Dorn
Tomkins
Cockayne
Gigot
Jowit
Lomax
Macdonnell
Ratchford
And can't really count connor as played in a load of positions
two of them missed massive chunks of year and 2 of these have same or more than Sneyd even. And we've been top team for half the year to
It's a key position in attack in the modern game. To progress as a team and him a player he's got to address it

But the FB role is more than just assists, compare try's, metres, breaks, catching the high ball and organising the defence, Shaul is ahead of most of them, IMO Shaul is in the top 3 FB's with Lomax and Dorn and I wouldn't swap him for either of those.

Some Hull fans want the perfect player (see the critism of Houghton and Briscoe), but in reality this doesn't happen in SL.