Uhhh I was talking about Whare. That was my point... when we got Whare he was surplus to their requirements. They had a full backline and he was only ever used when they had injuries... which with Stewart, Lyon and Matai in the backline was quiet often. They didn't NEED him. So he was worth more to us and we had a few openings for him to take. We tried fullback, that was a failure. He moved to centre and from there we haven't looked back.
Hiku on the other hand was part of their full strength team, and he was re-signed early into his stay at Manly when he would have been reasonably cheap to keep. But they wanted to offload him to sign Dylan Walker. They had a good player on a great value contract but opted for a game breaker instead.
I just don't see why we would outbid teams who actually need him when we have 4 established players in our backline, and 4 players who are young, talented, have first grade experience and with a single spot up for grabs for 4 guys to fight their way into the team.
If we have no confidence that Anthony Griffin can get one of those guys to reach their potential. What was the point in signing him? Maybe Ivan Cleary just wasn't as good at developing players as we thought he would be. He failed with quiet a few guys. Kevin Naiqama was good before he came here, was shit for us and then went reasonably well after leaving. Blake Austin was said to be a lost cause. Now he's the best #6 running around for NSW. He failed to get the best out of guys like Michael Jennings, Lachlan Coote, Tim Grant, Sam McKendry etc. who were all quality before he arrived. We have arguably our best crop of youngsters sitting in reserve grade at the moment and people think they aren't good enough for first grade because they had a few average games in their debut year under Ivan Cleary.
I think Blake and R Jennings have a higher ceiling then Hiku does. They definitely aren't near his league yet, but they could have been by seasons end if Griffin is better at developing players then Cleary was.
