Aliceinwonderland
First Grade
- Messages
- 7,602
Look at Melbourne and the roosters, they develop more players than they sign. Both have well over half of their top squads debut at the club. I don't really see why 80 percent is such a large number in your opinion. We have more juniors then anyone to chose from and we have less buying power then Melb or the roosters, I really think Gus was on to the recipe for our success, the fact he gave out some bad contracts to some juniors doesn't make the plan wrong, poorly executed perhaps.
The only difference between Goulds plan and what the best two clubs are doing is that we have local juniors to manage and pick from, a lot of them. Melbourne and the roosters don't, they do all their best recruiting before players have hit FG, but they are signing kids and developing them themselves a bloody lot.
I understand that players like Cordner were signed on contracts just as they hit SG ball. I understand his original contract was $200,000 none of which (at that time) was counted in the cap.
Melbourne and Chooks do a great job at identifying young talent and then put the finishing touches on them. Both Mitchell and Cordner were taken from the Newey development squads I understand (please correct me if I am wrong)