Cardiff Blues : Cuthbert to stay, and Gethin to return.

It looks to be a done deal that Cuthbert is going to sign on for a 3 year (?) contract extension at the Blues

Meanwhile, the French press are claiming that Gethin will leave Toulon at the end of the season and return to the Blues on a 4 year (?) deal - no doubt to see out the rest of his career.


The Gethin rumour is unconfirmed but fairly likely, while the Cuthbert one is almost certain.

Both will cost a lot and will be away with Wales a lot, but Cuthbert is our only international bar Halfpenny who bothers to play for us, and Gethin should help us shore up the LHP position in the HC at least (and if it is a 4 year contract we could have him after international retirement for a season)

How many props will the Blues have on their books now???

We must be the club with the largest playing staff and lowest quality in the front row!!!

Borrust, Andrews, Hobbs, Fillise, Mafi, Trevett, Williams, Dacey, Breeze, Kyriacou, plus the 2 romanians signed... What a waste of money!!!

If Jenkins and Rees sign next season too we'll have to buy 3/4 of these players out to get them off the books!!!

Glad Cuthbert looks like he's staying, he and 1/2p play a huge amount and are generally usefull regularly, as is Davies. The likes of Roberts, Warburton, Williams are pretty useless to the club!

Our backline needs a bit of quality at centre, and a solid 9 but we're ok there, it's the problem of lack of quality up front that will continue to hamper us, although we could have a potential pack of...

Andrews Rees Jenkins
Davies Reed
Paterson Pretorious Warburton
Jones Patchell/Tovey
Hewitt Allen/Evans
Cuthbert 1/2p James

If only Thomo had the gall to sign Delve and Gill when he had the chance, or kept hold of Phillips those 3 players wouldve made the Blues a team to really challenge.

For the first time in a while I am starting to feel a touch of optimism, if the likes of Dacey, Andrews, Reed, Navidi, Cook, Patchell, Allen, and Robinson all progress into the players I hope they will be we will start to look like a team again.

Can the blues afford to take Gethin back? serious question!

If they offload a lot of the guff they have, I'm sure if Mafi, Fillise, and Trevett/Hobbs are gotten shot off they can, plus I can't imagine Jenkins can command too much right now, he doesn't have many options

I suspect Gethin will come back for less than he was getting before he moved to France, nobody else wants him at inflated wages.

I think the Blues should target James Hook and a decent Welsh TH such as Roberts from Sale as they are going down.

IMHO Gethin Jenkins is a retrograde step. It would be better if the Blues were to try and develop younger props from within the region. He looked half the player he used to be during the AI's.

I thought Gethin played OK against Australia and worked hard in the loose, maybe the game time helped.

He was never the greatest scrummager.

Gethin Jenkins said that the reason he left the Blues was that when his contract came up for renewal they offered him a new one worth only 70% of his old one, I.e. they offered him a 30% pay cut to stay. This was around the time when Peter Thomas was saying that the Blues couldn't afford to pay Wales internationals while they were away.

What has changed? Are they now offering him the same or more to return? Why couldn't they have done that in the first place? Gethin says he would have been happy to stay. Would have saved a lot of hassle.

Cuthbert is an idiot if he stays with that joke team/club.... region??

Another pearler from the 'new guy', a million points to whoever guesses who's alias it is.

I hope this doesn’t mean (assuming it’s not a rumour) that we won't be signing Matthew Rees. Glad Cuthbert is staying, as stated he actually attempts to play for us when he’s selected. There is a lot of dross on the roster at the moment, I don't think we really capitalised on the retirements and end of contracts we had last year. We really need to stop picking up sub quality players. What we need is a bit more Patchell, and less Ma'afu.

thebluesmancometh wrote:How many props will the Blues have on their books now???

We must be the club with the largest playing staff and lowest quality in the front row!!!

Borrust, Andrews, Hobbs, Fillise, Mafi, Trevett, Williams, Dacey, Breeze, Kyriacou, plus the 2 romanians signed... What a waste of money!!!

If Jenkins and Rees sign next season too we'll have to buy 3/4 of these players out to get them off the books!!!

Glad Cuthbert looks like he's staying, he and 1/2p play a huge amount and are generally usefull regularly, as is Davies. The likes of Roberts, Warburton, Williams are pretty useless to the club!

Our backline needs a bit of quality at centre, and a solid 9 but we're ok there, it's the problem of lack of quality up front that will continue to hamper us, although we could have a potential pack of...

Andrews Rees Jenkins
Davies Reed
Paterson Pretorious Warburton
Jones Patchell/Tovey
Hewitt Allen/Evans
Cuthbert 1/2p James

If only Thomo had the gall to sign Delve and Gill when he had the chance, or kept hold of Phillips those 3 players wouldve made the Blues a team to really challenge.

For the first time in a while I am starting to feel a touch of optimism, if the likes of Dacey, Andrews, Reed, Navidi, Cook, Patchell, Allen, and Robinson all progress into the players I hope they will be we will start to look like a team again.

We didn't sign the 2 Romanians, I think one was given a development contract, possibly still with CRFC

Filise will retire at the end of the season, hopefully we can get rid of Ma'afu and Kyricau too

That leaves us with
LHP - Gethin, Hobbs, Trevett, Tom Davies
THP - Bourrust, Andrews, Hartford
Hooker - Rees (hopefully), Williams, Breeze, Dacey

(Trevett, Davies, Hartford, Williams, Breeze and Dacey will be on pretty small contract)

Considering we need 4 props and 2 hookers in each matchday squad, that is probably about right.


Also, we did offer a contract to Delve (a fairly generous one to apparently) but he turned it down because he wanted the better money on offer in France (I think that offer fell through and he was stuck at Melbourne??) - If we wanted to play for Wales he would has returned, but he clearly does not.

The offer for Delve was near half of the offer in France and near 75% of the offer of Melbourne Rebels. According to his dad Delve all but threw himself at the Blues and his counter offer pales in comparison to some of the contracts we have at the minute. Delve also turned down a larger offer from an AP team apparently to go to the Rebels... what a man sausage up that was from the Blues!

Same with Phillips, from what I was told Phillips asked the Blues to get near the O's offer of 180k and they refused to breach the 125 mark.

Both unsubstantiated mind.

Great news if true. I think Gethin will be a good servant to the Blues for the remainder of his career. The way I see it, he has just one year left with Wales after this one before we move on. So the Blues need to use him wisely, kind of like the Irish would do with O'Driscoll. You have two decent TH's, but not so sure about Trevett yet. The good news is, Blues pretty much have an international pack and a good fly-half coming through. If this team doesn't win any silverware then they never will!

Is Cuthber loyal or has his stock plummeted after the autumn series? Or are the French just cutting back? Toulon are rumoured to have signed Bryan Habana so I guess they aren't.

I have been hearing rumours of the Top 14 ready to collapse into itself Morg, Obviously Toulon, ASM and Tolouse have their sugar daddies but the rest are starting to struggle.

Guess they're feeling the pinch like the rest of the world then. SF went into debt a couple years ago didn't they? Although they seem to be back on their feet now. Despite this they'll probably have more cash to go around than the English teams which will be a lot more than the Welsh.

Yep, a Top 14 team on it's knees is still on more stable ground than the best welsh club!