Rumoured Targets 3

[perverse]

You want us to run like successful clubs, but then you give it to POS for utilising the same recruitment blueprint that the successful clubs use (going for good players with actual talent and not just throwing anyone a contract). If we were happy to just overpay everyone out of desperation like we have in the past he would have had multiple players recruited by now. That’s not been working for us though.

What we’re doing now is targeting players that have talent. I know they have talent because of the other clubs that are chasing them. The only downside to that is we’re competing against clubs that can offer players a much better destination than we are the moment. I’d still prefer us to take our time looking for the right targets, ones with genuine talent that the top teams also want, than just throw money at anyone like we have in the past that hasn’t worked.

I have no idea how POS will work out, but the guy is trying to do something different to the same crap we’ve been doing for years that hasn’t worked. I’m choosing to be supportive of that and give him the benefit of the doubt before reverting to the standard Knights negativity.

Ok cool, well I look forward to you growing tired and getting upset about my well-rusted-on cynicism then, lol. After two decades straight of disappointment, the club has to earn back my goodwill at the end of the day. It's not coming for free. I'm happy for you that you can still find that positivity.

 

[perverse]

This is such a frustrating half baked argument.

Why aren't we recruiting like a successful club? Because we are not a successful club. We are not a desirable destination. That can't at all be hard to understand?

You have to choose between here and the Bulldogs or Storm. A team who is trying to rebuild vs premiership contenders. When we're competing directly against these clubs for players we're either going to miss out or over pay.

Why is it so offensive to you that I don't think it's good business (nor believe it necessary) to tap blokes on the shoulder a year or more out from their contracts ending before we've got a replacement lined up?

Trust me, I get that we're undesireable. I was probably writing essays on here about it before you were potty trained.

What it comes down to is that you guys are willing to give carte blanche to Peter O'Sullivan based on reputation alone, as well as disregard your own eyes to the state of things (and currently signed roster for next year too) in favour of the hope and a dream that this time it'll be different. I don't know how all of this will pan out, it might be wildly successful, but for the moment I'm highly skeptical because while I agree with you that paying overs is not the way - I also know that we can go backwards from here even, and it's looking likely to me as we sit here right now. You bloke sare ready for another 5 year plan, and as I sit here today I'm not convinced it was entirely necessary. I would have liked to have seen the past 2 years (and next few too) with different coaching staff.

I'm doubly concerned that we'll be sitting here in another 3 years still waiting for these mythical value signings and still being coached by an AOB that "never had the cattle" in the boards eyes. That would be the truest disaster of all.

If me pointing out the flaws in the strategy I'm seeing play out in front of me is frustrating to you I'm not sure what to say other than bad luck, lol.

 

[HarVeeGee]

Storm’s spine is around 4mil and they are still signing players

I know we arnt as appealing as melbourne

Yes, obviously… but they’re not going to be signing Reed Mahoney, are they? Because they already have a starting hooker, you see.

No one’s saying the Knights don’t need to sign more players, but we’re probably paying Phoenix Crossland $500K now, it’d be $600K to even get a boot in the door with Mahoney… so, what, are we going to spend $1.1 million on two middling hookers, have them both play 40 minutes each? Why would you do that?

 

[Apey]

Wonder what Raiders offered Brailey. Expensive NSW Cup player, you'd think.

 

[Knight Tales]

Mahoney is zero chance of coming here according to Barry Toohey. I believe he is very talented myself, but for some reason only he knows, going to the Dogs has made him damaged goods.

 

[slotmachine]

The only downside to that is we’re competing against clubs that can offer players a much better destination than we are the moment.

And if POS isn't willing to pay more he won't sign anyone.

 

[Woody90]

Ok cool, well I look forward to you growing tired and getting upset about my well-rusted-on cynicism then, lol. After two decades straight of disappointment, the club has to earn back my goodwill at the end of the day. It's not coming for free. I'm happy for you that you can still find that positivity.

Get off your high horse. Believe or not automatically seeing the worst in everything the club does or tries to do doesn’t make you intellectually superior or above people who don’t see every single situation with 100% negatively. Given how the club has performed on all fronts in the last 20 years you’re not some kind of visionary sitting back and predicting something or someone won’t work out (it’s the Knights, they manage to f**k up most things) and then being ready to smugly say “I told you so” to everyone as if the act of simply giving someone the cautious benefit of the doubt because he’s approaching things differently than all our previous recruitment managers have must be a sign of sheep like stupidity.

What it comes down to is that you guys are willing to give carte blanche to Peter O'Sullivan based on reputation alone, as well as disregard your own eyes to the state of things

Completely false. I’m currently giving him the benefit of the doubt because I like what I see him doing.

I like that he’s drawing a line in the sand and not letting us continue to over pay players who aren’t helping improve us.

I like that we’re actually now targeting players that the good teams also want rather than just going after players nobody else wants like we have in the past.

I get you just want him to make signings for the sake of making signings or re-signings no matter the cost, but that mentality is why we’ve had zero success for the past 20 years. If we don’t change that we’ll never become a better club.

 

[Woody90]

And if POS isn't willing to pay more he won't sign anyone.

We offered Latu a lot more than the Dogs did, but shockingly an 18 year old preferred to stay in his same city, play at the club his brother is also at, under a team building for a premiership and doesn’t have 24/7 articles about the coach being sacked coming out.

Likewise we offered Pezet a lot more money than the Storm.

But yeah, that’s POS’ fault for not offering them enough money.

 

[perverse]

Get off your high horse. Believe or not automatically seeing the worst in everything the club does or tries to do doesn’t make you intellectually superior or above people who don’t see every single situation with 100% negatively. Given how the club has performed on all fronts in the last 20 years you’re not some kind of visionary sitting back and predicting something or someone won’t work out (it’s the Knights, they manage to f**k up most things) and then being ready to smugly say “I told you so” to everyone as if the act of simply giving someone the cautious benefit of the doubt because he’s approaching things differently than all our previous recruitment managers have must be a sign of sheep like stupidity.




Completely false. I’m currently giving him the benefit of the doubt because I like what I see him doing.

I like that he’s drawing a line in the sand and not letting us continue to over pay players who aren’t helping improve us.

I like that we’re actually now targeting players that the good teams also want rather than just going after players nobody else wants like we have in the past.

I get you just want him to make signings for the sake of making signings or re-signings no matter the cost, but that mentality is why we’ve had zero success for the past 20 years. If we don’t change that we’ll never become a better club.

No I don't want him to make signings at any cost, I want him to not run the broom through the place before he's got some replacements lined up. We've known the list of players that weren't going to be kept for a long time now, which means they've known even longer, and all we have to show for it is Dylbags and a long list of failed targets (and a team that has not looked happy to be out there this year).

To me, it looks like POS has taken it on himself to sacrifice at *least* 2 full seasons of football in order to... hopefully sign someone that fits the criteria. There was no need to go tapping blokes on the shoulder without any idea who would take their jersey. In fact I'd be surprised if we don't end up backpedaling and offering a few of them contracts, because the other option is not looking pleasant with every target we miss.

 

[perverse]

And if POS isn't willing to pay more he won't sign anyone.

This. 1000 times this. Honestly, if you're going to do some 5 year plan bullshit here at Newcastle, the answer isn't coming from the outside, it has to come from within. Which means a slow and steady buildup of replacing what we have with the options we're creating from within. If we're not producing the talent from within then we're f**ked sideways whatever you do. It's a completely naive pipe dream that you're going to scour the market for all the value buys and somehow get them to Newcastle cheaply.

I actually thought this was the plan, so I'm a little weirded out that we've made the decision to turf the joint and try to recruit like this. I'm very skeptical if it will work. Not the direction I would have steered the club.

 

[Woody90]

No I don't want him to make signings at any cost, I want him to not run the broom through the place before he's got some replacements lined up. We've known the list of players that weren't going to be kept for a long time now, which means they've known even longer, and all we have to show for it is Dylbags and a long list of failed targets (and a team that has not looked happy to be out there this year).

To me, it looks like POS has taken it on himself to sacrifice at *least* 2 full seasons of football in order to... hopefully sign someone that fits the criteria. There was no need to go tapping blokes on the shoulder without any idea who would take their jersey. In fact I'd be surprised if we don't end up backpedaling and offering a few of them contracts, because the other option is not looking pleasant with every target we miss.

Again though, what players are you so worried about him putting the broom though? DSaf? Hastings? Brailey? KPP? Hetherington? Will Pryce?

Can you honestly sit there and say that any of those players would be changing our position significantly next year?

OK absolute worse case scenario we lose all of those players and sign absolutely nobody (which I don’t think will happen by the way), how detrimental will that really be for us? We’re already in the BOTTOM 4 with those players and would have been dead last if we hadn’t beat Penrith. We can’t fall any further than we already are LOL.

Clearing cap space from players that aren’t helping us though means that if targets become available we have money ready to go. Or, and I think for us more importantly, if we have a promising junior that other clubs are sniffing around, we can upgrade them. There’s no running the risk of us not being able to sign them because we can’t quickly offload a player who isn’t currently helping us. You seem to keep missing this fact - it’s all well and good to say in a perfect world we’d have players lined up before moving on the current ones we have, but it’s not easy to move on players few other clubs want - it took us months to move on DSaf.

 

[perverse]

Again though, what players are you so worried about him putting the broom though? DSaf? Hastings? Brailey? KPP? Hetherington? Will Pryce?

Can you honestly sit there and say that any of those players would be changing our position significantly next year?

OK absolute worse case scenario we lose all of those players and sign absolutely nobody (which I don’t think will happen by the way), how detrimental will that really be for us? We’re already in the BOTTOM 4 with those players and would have been dead last if we hadn’t beat Penrith. We can’t fall any further than we already are LOL.

Clearing cap space from players that aren’t helping us though means that if targets become available we have money ready to go. There’s no running the risk of us not being able to sign them because we can’t quickly offload a player who isn’t currently helping us. You seem to keep missing this fact - it’s all well and good to say in a perfect world we’d have players lined up before moving on the current ones we have, but it’s not easy to move on players few other clubs want - it took us months to move on DSaf.

We should be keeping Hetherington and Elliott at a minimum, and KPP we've had since November to sign a replacement, because he was never going to stay. We'll only have money "ready to go" if they happen to become available in the window the money is available. We have to spend 95% of the cap every year. Front loading will only cause us more dramas in a couple of years when the cap becomes unbalanced as a result again. So "keeping money available" is mostly a complete myth. Clubs aren't allowed to keep any significant money laying around as per the RLPA agreement.

I wouldn't have let go of DSaf without a body to replace him either but I was saying that a year ago so it's nothing new.

 

[Woody90]

We should be keeping Hetherington and Elliott at a minimum, and KPP we've had since November to sign a replacement, because he was never going to stay. We'll only have money "ready to go" if they happen to become available in the window the money is available. We have to spend 95% of the cap every year. Front loading will only cause us more dramas in a couple of years when the cap becomes unbalanced as a result again. So "keeping money available" is mostly a complete myth. Clubs aren't allowed to keep any significant money laying around as per the RLPA agreement.

I wouldn't have let go of DSaf without a body to replace him either but I was saying that a year ago so it's nothing new.

I don’t know how many times it needs to be said but DSaf’s targeted “replacement” at the time was upgrading Leo. They were trying to find money to give Leo the upgrade that Zammit had promised him but not delivered on to give us any chance of keeping him. Yes he left anyway, but sometimes you’ve got to be prepared to take a risk to lose someone that’s not doing their job in favour of giving yourself a chance to keep someone that is. What did you want us to say in negotiations to Leo? “So we want to offer you this much next year and an upgrade for this year but we don’t have that money free now, it’s dependent on us being able to move on DSaf that might not happen” - that’s just not how you do business.

At the time we were all so pissed off at DSaf’s laziness people would have been ropable if the club hadn’t even tried to move him on if it meant there was a chance of keeping Leo. Now I definitely think that Leo is overhyped, but he was 150% offering way more than DSaf was at the time this all went down.

 

[The Axe of Druss]

OK absolute worse case scenario we lose all of those players and sign absolutely nobody (which I don’t think will happen by the way), how detrimental will that really be for us? We’re already in the BOTTOM 4 with those players and would have been dead last if we hadn’t beat Penrith. We can’t fall any further than we already are LOL.

If you don't think things can get worse then you haven't been a Knights fan very long

Ask Tigers fans just how detrimental getting multiple spoons in a row is. Make no mistake, that's where we are headed right now

 

[Woody90]

If you don't think things can get worse then you haven't been a Knights fan very long

Ask Tigers fans just how detrimental getting multiple spoons in a row is. Make no mistake, that's where we are headed right now

The point is that the players were “letting go” aren’t going to stop us from getting the spoon. We were last earlier in the week with them in the squad.

 

[The Axe of Druss]

The point is that the players were “letting go” aren’t going to stop us from getting the spoon. We were last earlier in the week with them in the squad.

Thats a bit disingenuous though. Yes they were in the squad last week but they were also in the squad the last 2 years when we made the 8.

 

[Alex28]

I think you can work on a “5 year plan” of sorts and only pay what the player is worth if we have a competitive team where adding the right player makes us a genuine top 4 team, and that player comes here to win a premiership over taking more money elsewhere.

If we continue to produce guys like Lucas, Sharpe, Best, Hunt (hopefully) - then we can get to that spot. That is a few years off though…

Depends how patient we can be. Judging by social media (and here) - not at all. Cooler heads inside the club appear to be though.

 

[The Axe of Druss]

Its a fine line though

Yes building from within and developing your own quality players is the best way however if it drags on too long between successes, lets say 20+ years, then you risk not only losing your supporter bases trust but the confidence of any prospective recruitment targets

 

[Yosh]

I know lots of people criticize our youth development but the likes of Best, Sharpe, Lucas have become genuine stars in the past few seasons. Hunt, McEwen and Hopwood potentially might go on to be solid/star players, maybe our youth systems aren't too bad? That's like half a starting side.

 

[HarVeeGee]

Its a fine line though

Yes building from within and developing your own quality players is the best way however if it drags on too long between successes, lets say 20+ years, then you risk not only losing your supporter bases trust but the confidence of any prospective recruitment targets

For sure. It’s terrible for your young players’ development to come into first grade and get pumped every week. We need to pick up a couple of first grade standard forwards, for sure. Give the young fellas a decent proportion of games where we’re actually in the contest (plus the odd easy win).

I think where we’ve gone wrong in the past is chase the absolute optimal result each season, with no real long term plan. That’s what leads to the cap repeatedly being messed up - paying overs & giving a long term deal for a player that will help you a fair bit next year (Hastings being the biggest recent example), instead of paying a fair price for a guy who’ll just plug the gap until the genuinely elite option comes along - the truly transformative guy - whether via recruitment or internal development.

The fine line you want to tread is being respectable in the short term - so basically, not lose your mind over being a 10-14 team which finishes 11th-12th rather than a 12-12 team which finishes 8th - while you put the building blocks in place to be elite down the line.

Easier said than done. There’s a psychological “made the finals/didn’t make the finals” hurdle in how seasons are assessed, but really, the difference between finishing comfortably in the top four and being a real contender & sneaking into the 8 is way bigger than the difference between finishing 7th-8th and being a bottom four team (let alone between 7th-8th and 12th).