What you all have to remember is these articles are not designed to help Lima. The journos don't care about Lima, and I would hazard a guess that Owen Slot would say, and rightly, that many an AB has been up against it in the press, and many have prevailed over the articles. Great players beat what is written about them. I guess they would say that if an article can be a downfall of a great player then they were not that great.
Lima will hopefully come back and play better than this year, where no less a man than Rob Smith was publically suggesting that Rob Miller was a better choice at the end. That was not the plan when Dai signed him, and pretending otherwise won't help Lima.
Danny was, and indeed is, the best ten in the NH. Nobody could compete. I know it is not the case that 'we let him go', but Shaun E said that we did on BT. Nobody laid into him for that, and rightly so; we don't know what we could have done at the last to keep him, if anything, but he went and to the outside it looks strange. Nobody knows if Dai looked forward to the change with any relish.
DC is possibly the best ten in the world, albiet in a maverick way that Eddie won't ever get his head around.
There is a suspicion, voiced by those more knowledgeable than myself, that maybe Dai did not quite see eye to eye with Danny. Who knows? I don't, and would not care to say.
We did replace one with the other, in that the team sheet says so. We did not mean to, it was probably not a question of signing one over the other, and had Danny signed earlier then Lima would have rocked up for someone else. But the teamsheet says we had Danny, we have Lima, on more money, reputedly at least, and hence tomorrow's fish and chip wrappings have this article. Most likely nobody said "let's drop Danny for Lima" but the net effect was Danny for Lima, in the same way it was Wade for Watson, so I can't really have a pop at the journos who produce this based solely on last season's teamsheet and this.
I do hope it works next but the Times owes us nothing. Not Dai, not Lima, not Cips, not Wasps. They are within their rights to report, albiet superficially, that we exchanged Cips for Lima. The point is, if course, to sell papers and such season reviews are commonplace. I will be honest, I don't really like Slots' comments on rugby in general, he writes the obvious, but I feel getting angry at the article or the reposting of it won't help.
Always a Wasp
