Smith was a Noble signing, he came with our first batch of Super-duper-stars at the Red Devilution.

Quote ="martin13"I know a bloke who works for fages agency, he told me a while ago that salford had made a 'brilliant offer' to him, but they (the agents) hate koucash, and also salford in my opinion, and he was going, agents are parasites and ive told this bloke my views but he says they are only interested in the players welfare, complete bull, they are only interested in what they can get. What i would really like to know is why couldn't theo fages say to his agent, he would resign at the end of the season? After all he makes the final ">decision.'" Heard similar that Graeme Taylor and Marwan Koukash have a very volatile relationship, even to the point of Koukash banning him from the stadium. Clearly his agent has done all he could to move him on from Salford and my theory on the resignation is, Mr Taylor knew Saints would never pay a transfer fee above £50k so in order to reduce Theo's value (probably around £80k) he used mistakes Salford had made previously with regards to Theos contract and cite breach of contract. Knowing full well an RFL tribunal would favour the player and set a marginal transfer fee. As we know, it never went to a tribunal and a fee of less than £30k was agreed.

Quote ="martin13"I know a bloke who works for fages agency, he told me a while ago that salford had made a 'brilliant offer' to him, but they (the agents) hate koucash, and also salford in my opinion, and he was going, agents are parasites and ive told this bloke my views but he says they are only interested in the players welfare, complete bull, they are only interested in what they can get. What i would really like to know is why couldn't theo fages say to his agent, he would resign at the end of the season? After all he makes the final ">decision.'" Heard similar that Graeme Taylor and Marwan Koukash have a very volatile relationship, even to the point of Koukash banning him from the stadium. Clearly his agent has done all he could to move him on from Salford and my theory on the resignation is, Mr Taylor knew Saints would never pay a transfer fee above £50k so in order to reduce Theo's value (probably around £80k) he used mistakes Salford had made previously with regards to Theos contract and cite breach of contract. Knowing full well an RFL tribunal would favour the player and set a marginal transfer fee. As we know, it never went to a tribunal and a fee of less than £30k was agreed.

Sorry can't agree with that statement...in my opinion the biggest mistake of the Koucash era was appointing Brian Noble and trusting his judgement on players...to me Noble had lost touch with the modern game and his signings reflected this. Apart from Greg Johnson we had absolutely no pace whatsoever and the style of play wasn't great to watch either. Smith and Chase never jelled...Meli and Williams too slow...I thought when Harris took over he did an admirable job steadying the ship, sorting the defence out and injecting much needed pace. I think Harris had bad luck with the Chase ban and then Dobson getting injured ...apart from the strange signing of Micheal Platt who ran like a tortoise on prozac he did ok in my book. With regards to Theo ? Im not too bothered ..let Saints have him ..unless Long can develop him I don't think his kicking game will be good enough for that level and will be found out...Id much rather we tie Evalds down to lengthy contract and look after him as that young man is definitely a class act.

Noble could only sign what was available,hence Smith not Dobson.

The Koukash mistake was jettisoning Noble too early and starting the trend of instability

Personally I think Koukash made a knee jerk reaction. Fair enough if Noble wasn't the right man he should have held off and waited for a few months for a proven Aussie coach to become available. It may have cost a lot more money to attract this caliber of coach but I'm pretty certain we would be in a much better position now.

Seems the minute he leaves Salford he feels more comfortable not wearing a head guard.



Playing against Wales ATM, looks odd not seeing him in the cap.