robjoenz posted:
With the exception of the Ellis -v- Reardon/Langley saga Caisley and Hetherington seem to be doing a better job than Lindsay. I'm not saying I know who can do a better job but I feel it's time to look elsewhere, the salary cap climate is very different to the one in which Lindsays' praises are being sung.
It certainly is different and whether or not he is any good at running the ship within the new rules people seem to expect him to assemble a team with strength in depth when the rules simply don't allow it.
You can have 20 players paid more then £20K a year and that is your lot.
The team that is successful next season will be the one that is lucky with injuries. If Leeds had our injury problems last year they would not have won it, simple as that. They would not have functioned anywhere like as well without McQuire for weeks on end or three senior props missing with one of them forced out of the game permanently.
I mentioned in another thread about a game I saw from 1991/2, Saints v Wigan cup semi final and sure enough the Wigan squad was awesome. But so was the Saints squad and watching that game the level of play was higher then I saw from most games last season. Only games like Wigan v Leeds at the JJB were in the same league.
You can't have
experienced cover in every position because you are not allowed to pay a reserve team the wages required to employ them all.
Look at Leeds in the half back slot, they have Burrow, Dunneman and McQuire and if two of those three are injured you are talking about Sinfield coming in from loose forward and someone else taking over at loose.
IMO we are better placed for cover at half back than Leeds are with Moran, Orr, Coyle and O'Loughlin.
If you add to that the fact we are now playing in the same season as the NRL getting players here is much harder than it was as they won't give up an NRL careeer to come here in their prime unless things are not right at home (e.g. C Smith who had fallen out with the judiciary).
I also am pretty sure Betts will say things like "We need another centre" but I he can't just say "I want so and so as he is a top centre" because the player probably won't be available. So it is then up to ML to go and find "a" centre, the best available.
At the time we signed him that player was Vaekeli or however you spell it.
The rules are different now and all clubs have got to compromise their squads somewhere and how they do that and what luck they have with injuries are what will determine where the trophies go all else being equal.
Someone posted a team list showing who could play where and that shows how quite a few of our players can play in different positions. This is now forced on teams because of the 20/20 rule and personally I don't think it does a great deal for the overall standard of the game in the UK but that is how squads must be these days.
Dave