cherry.pie wrote:It may be a little unfair on Noble and another excuse for those who don't like him to have a pop at him, but he really has done himself no favours when you consider his past record with signing overseas players.
It's probably been said a million times before but I honestly think that overseas players are essential for Super League, otherwise we'd be even further behind the Aussies in every department. The top class players that are brought over like Barrett and Gidley are good for the game, but the average overseas players that are brought in to take up places that could quite easily filled by a young player is not going to help our game one bit.
You have to be careful even bringing in top class players if we have too many in the key positions.
I am not sure though how they are good for the game. Just what will any of our younger players have learned off Barrett being here for two years?
Watching him play was good and it raised the standard of the games themselves as he was class but I am not sure just how much influence or actual real input he will have had into Tomkins development for example. After all Barrett had his own training regime and games to play and he wasn't employed as a coach.
Unfortunately Phelps fits perfectly into that category. He was brought in because he was cheap and available. He took the place of a young English player when he was actually one of our better players at that time. People can knock Goulding all they want but at the start of the season he was in better form than Phelps was at any point last season, and by the end of the season Phelps was our worst player. Was it really worth it? Now we have Phelps taking up a quota spot for another year, but had Noble stuck with Goulding, and given Stanton or Ainscough at least a single game to see how they fared, we could have at least tied up the signing of Roberts earlier, since Noble & Lenegan are so keen on giving us yet another Aussie import.
There is no problem with signing a player like Barrett, he can offer a lot to a young player. Is there anything wrong with signing a player like Smith? No, he was cheap, it was relatively necessary that we signing a replacement for Barrett, and at his best he's another player who young players can learn off. If he doesn't perform we have Tomkins.
Is there a problem with signing a player like Phelps? Well yes, average at best, a tackling technique that even 8 year olds would know is wrong, and offers nothing that couldn't be found in either one of our young players or another English player. There are too many players like that in Super League at the moment, and they prevent more English players playing for their clubs, therefore reducing the numbers of players the English coach can pick from.
I agree the lower standard players like Phelps do take up slots. I have said it for years it was fundamentally a bad thing.
In the clubs defence though they say they are cash-strapped due to some huge salaries so if we were to be generous we can only judge their recruitment properly when that issue is out of the way. If when it is we still see average imports come to the club we will need a new direction.
Dave