In fact he had nearly 30 players by November 1996 but that included six apprentices.
But he was desperately short in some positions, particularly at prop. So he and new Football Manager David Hobbs went recruiting.
Before the advent of Super League the club's directors each used to have responsibility for specific areas of activity.
For example, Mike Ellis looked after the ground, Robert Atkinson was in charge of Football and Neil Anderton looked after the commercial side of the club.
But the RFL wanted full-time employees and Tony Beevers, another director, who knew Hobbs from their days at Odsal together, recommended the former prop.
Fax of course had ended the first summer season on a high, winning six of their last nine games and beating Bradford and Leeds in the process.
But back to the prop forward situation.
Karl Harrison had played in the vast majority of matches in 1996 but had had a bewildering array of partners on the opposite side of the front row.
Their number didn't include Michael Slicker, who missed the entire year due to a shoulder reconstruction, but featured at various times Andy James, Richard Marshall, Paul Anderson, Martin Ketteridge and Wayne Jackson.
All had their share of injuries – Jackson's head knock was instrumental in later bringing his career to a premature end – and Ketteridge had the singular honour of being dropped one week and restored to the side as captain in the absence of the injured Harrison the following Sunday!
Simms was keen on Featherstone's Steve Molloy whilst Hobbs went chasing after another old mate of his Kelvin Skerrett.
They had played together at Odsal and the advantage of signing him was that there was no transfer fee involved as he had moved from Bradford to Wigan as a "free agent".
The downside was that he had barely played in 1996 due to injury.
Other clubs were interested but Hobbs persuaded him to sign for Halifax on a "pay as you play" basis although it was a pretty lucrative one.
Having said that the deal didn't cost the club overmuch as Skerrett only played a total of seven appearances in 1997 after breaking his arm at Bradford of all places!
That deal done, there were still plenty of phone calls to be made in November 1996.
The departed Graeme Hallas, Carl Briggs, Mark Preston and Abi Ekoku all needed replacing and we didn't know that rugby union would account for most of John Bentley's career from then on.
Assistant coach Steve Deakin did his bit for numbers by arranging for five French players to come across but "Hobbsy's" contacts proved crucial again.
He persuaded Martin Pearson to sign ("Pee-wee's" agents were Peter Fox and former Yorkshire rugby union centre Brian Barley), both personal friends of Hobbs. He then pulled another rabbit from the hat with the signing of Daio Powell.
He had played at Northern with Hobbs and his manager was Barry Seabourne, who had coached that team!