SO IT’S say hello to Adam Hammill and wave goodbye to Jordan Rhodes, and I’d like to wish both players the best of luck as the season moves forward.

Adam is an exciting attacking player well known to our manager Simon Grayson, and he arrives on loan with a real desire to get a promising career right back on track after it stalled slightly at Wolves.

He’ll offer us another option wide out alongside Danny Ward and Sean Scannell, and as well as making goals, he can also score them.

Of course we all hoped Jordan (right) would be wearing the blue and white of Town not Blackburn, but we have to be realistic.

He’s a top striker who has given us three seasons of excellent service, and we all knew there would come a time when he left.

As the chairman has stated, it could have been last January, but despite serious interest, Jordan agreed to stay and help us in what turned out to be a successful bid to win promotion.

His superb scoring rate for both club and country ensured there would be a summer of speculation, and when Jordan decided he wanted to talk to Blackburn and they came up with the kind of offer which was acceptable, there was far less chance of keeping him.

I know eyebrows will be raised because he has gone to another club in the Championship rather than one in the Premier League.

But because of their recent Premier League status and the parachute payments following relegation, Blackburn are at a different level financially and were able to offer Jordan a contract which will give him real security.

Having made a major contribution to his development into an international player, we have received an excellent fee which will give us security and the chance to invest further.

GOOD luck too to Joel Lynch and Oliver Norwood as they prepare for the opening World Cup qualifiers with Wales and Northern Ireland.

I’m told it’s 50 years since a Town player featured in the finals of a World Cup – Ray Wilson for England in Chile in 1962.

You have to say that Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland all have very tough tasks ahead.

Joel could come up against Jordan Rhodes since Wales and Scotland are in the same group.

The section also includes Belgium, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia, and the trips to those countries will be especially difficult.

As for Northern Ireland, they kick-off with the stiff task of a game against Fabio Capello’s Russia in Moscow on Friday.

After that come Portugal, as well as Luxembourg, Israel and Azerbaijan.

Regardless of the outcome, these games will provide great experience.

ANDREW STRAUSS was a top England captain – from the beginning of his memorable reign right to the very end.

I’m a massive fan of the Middlesex star under whom we enjoyed two sweet Ashes successes – and also his successor Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, whose name will always be written alongside that of Strauss in cricket’s history books.

Strauss took over the national side in the wake of a turbulent spell when Pietersen was in charge.

He brought calm from chaos and led England to a top home triumph over the Aussies in 2009.

He did even better in 2010-11, when we won the Ashes Down Under for the first time in 24 long years, and under his guidance, we became the world’s top Test team.

Strauss has insisted he was debating his future long before Pietersen started sending his infamous texts to the South Africans, and that the latest Test series against them was always going to be a key one in terms of whether he would carry on as England skipper or not.

But whether he likes it or not, most people will think the latest KP affair was a big contributory factor to his decision to call time on his career.

It came as no surprise that Strauss insisted the Pietersen rumpus had no bearing and that it was his own deteriorating form with the bat that brought his departure.

Always one to put the team first, which is what a good captain should do, the dignified manner of his exit mirrored the way he skippered the side.

And crucially, by refusing to bring Pietersen into the equation, he has left the way open for him to come back into the England frame.

There’s a way still to go on that front, because senior players like James Anderson, Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad are rightly very loyal to Strauss and will surely take some convincing that Pietersen’s texts did not swing the skipper.

But when focused on his game, Pietersen’s a top player who has made a big contribution to our success and will hopefully continue to do so.

Cook will have learned a lot from Strauss, and the current situation will provide an early test of his credentials as captain.

It’s going to take some sense from all sides to get everyone pulling in the same direction once again.