All the talk about Latrell is fluff. Not only will he not be here but we dont need him. Latrell is a right centre and so is Burns and a fit Burns with that left foot step is a more consistent and cheaper option than Latrell - we just need to keep him on the park. One could argue that we need a left centre but again we need to put more faith in Roberts, remember he was a mid season signing so had no pre-season with the team - in fact he appears to have spent his pre-season actively trashing his body. Further to that, what Roberts needs in order to have impact is good early ball (exactly what Latrell needs as well) and that comes down to Reynolds. A strong pre-season with Murray, Cook and Reynolds working together to create space for Roberts and we will see an entirely different player.
We should off-load Gagai and get a young up and coming back to fill the gap but remember we already have Burns, Roberts, Graham, AJ, Doueihi, Allan, Gebbie, Marsters, Goodwin, Denniss and Paulo in our stocks. Some potential cheapies currently without a club are John Olive, Aaron Gray, Javid Bowen, Gideon Gela-Moseby, Josh Hoffman and Mawene Hiroti is still open as well. I would pick up Hoffman in a second to give us more depth and then back the young talent we have
THEN we need to use Sam's retirement and some Gagai money to buy 3 forwards because we are seriously light in that area. Zane Tetevano, Frank Winterstein, Lloyd Perrett, Kurt Capewell, Scott Sorenson, Mitchell Allgood and Patrick Kaufusi are all available but they are all reserve graders. We currently look like having a forward pack of
8. T Burgess,
9.. Cook,
10. Knight,
11. Su'a,
12. Lowe,
13. Murray
with Tatola, Amone, Sironen and Nichols on the bench
and only Rodwell, Koloamatangi, Jack Johns and Dillon in our reggies.
We need 1 gun and 2 players at Nichols+ level. There is no way we are winning many games with that forward pack even accounting for Knight, Tatola and Murray to continue improving. Worst case scenario we need a big name signing for 2021 in the forwards and we need to snap up 3 or 4 of the players above and see if Bennett can do what Hasler did with the Sea Eagles this year and create a winning team from ordinary players