Jamie Foster column

The club’s change of ownership was finally completed this week – and it had to be.

It had dragged on for far too long and wasn’t good for the club or the brand. It has all been on Franny’s shoulders and he’s not been able to bring in players other than loans.

We need permanent signings because as much as I can give an interview and say ‘we’re trying hard’, sometimes it’s not enough. You need more than that and that means helping out with numbers in the squad – that’s the harsh reality of it. I obviously missed the Hull KR game through illness last week and we lost Matt Diskin and Adam Sidlow to injury.

I just thought to myself ‘how bad can this get?’ because the amount of bad luck we’ve had is incredible. It’s a credit to everyone here that the mood has remained so upbeat.

Fair play to the lads who have left because they were family men and they made their decision, so good on them. But hopefully we have got the right owner and the lads here can kick on.

Marc Green seemed pretty promising that he has the funds available to back Franny and bring in the players he wants. There are certain areas of the team that need strengthening and I’m sure Marc will meet Franny halfway by buying those players.

That is what is going to be needed because I don’t think that hard work will be enough to keep us up as the squad is so thin right now.

We definitely need three aggressive middle men in the pack and then our backs can do their stuff. At the moment our backs look ineffective because there is no platform to play off.

Widnes this weekend will be a tough one and I think Denis Betts is a good coach who has a squad capable of pushing for the top eight.

I can’t stand their pitch – I hate it, in fact – and it’s absolutely scandalous that we have to play on it. It’s crazy but we’re just focusing on going there and getting the points we need to kick-start our season.