I'm really starting to think hoppa is on decent coin for 2012/13 and sandow is on the ridiculous money as stated by the media.
Nah mate.
We had the cash ($300k) to throw at Hinchcliffe, and surplus to fill out the squad. Since he knocked us back we pretty well only signed Lussick and Harrison.
If Harrison is on anything > minimum contract, we've stuffed up. And Lussick was reportedly in the high 100s.
Combine the departure of Horo and Esi, and that frees up an absolute minimum of $120k (Manly must pay them at least that). So we should have plenty of "wiggle room" under the cap.
The issue will most likely be that the NRL don't allows "significant variance" in the amount someone gets paid on a year to year basis. So under the above numbers (educated guesses) we'd have around $300kish to give Izzy this season. We might have tried to register him at $300k for year 1, then $600k for years 2 and 3. The NRL might be saying 'nuh-uh' to the variance.
We've probably already allocated our marquee player allowances for next season, possible Tonga (W) is receiving it next year, and so what we NEED to do is convince W Tonga to opt out or something so that we can give that money to Izzy instead. It something like $100k per player, which would then smooth out the deal to 400/ 500/ 600. Which the NRL might be more inclined to approve for us?
So we're waiting for W Tonga to retired, get picked up elsewhere, or for individual sponsors to come forward for either him or Folau so that we can get the cash side of things sorted out 'legally' (as Ricky put it).
That's all hypothesis of course - but it's better than Gronks Leeds/ Wigan swap isn't it!!
