The Warriors are close to extending Wayde Egan’s contract at the club, with the hooker’s current deal running out at the end of next season.
The 24-year-old had previously been told that he wouldn’t be offered a new deal until a least half a dozen games of the 2022 season had been played.
But following the departure of Peter O’Sullivan as the club’s recruitment and retention manager, Warriors power brokers have had a rethink and decided sign up Egan straight away.
“We’re not far away from tying something up with Wayde,” Warriors’ general manager football Craig Hodges said.
“We’ve been talking to him and his manager for the last week or two.
“We’re not far away from locking something in there and hopefully we’ll have a bit of news in that space in the next week or two.”
Warriors’ Craig Hodges general manager football says the club have reassessed a number of retention decisions recently.
Securing Egan’s future gives the club stability at the crucial position of dummy half for the next few seasons.
Egan’s form at the Warriors during his earlier time at the club was sporadic, but last season he showed his worth, particularly as for most of the campaign he was the only specialist and experienced No 9 on their roster.
As Stuff revealed last week, t
he Warriors have upgraded hooker Taniela Otukolo to a place in the club’s 30-man roster next season and he is still regarded as a key player for the future.
But since O’Sullivan left for the Dolphins and Hodges was promoted from an assistant coach to his new role, he, along with CEO Cameron George and head coach Nathan Brown have re-evaluated some of the previous retention decisions.
“We reassessed everything to decide what direction we wanted the team to go in and how we needed to get it there,” Hodges said.
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“Some things stayed the same, some things we tweaked and some things we changed wholeheartedly
“But at the end of it we put our stamp on it pretty quickly and we’ll continue to do that.”
Part of Hodge’s role will be giving the club the best roster possible next season, but also preparing for the future and showing younger players that there is a clear pathway into the first-grade team.
“We’re looking to win immediately, we’re trying to build a successful team in the short term, as well as building one in the medium term,” Hodges said.
“So we need to have guys like Taniela, Viliame Vailea and Rocco Berry and we’ve got lots of young guys with some of them having had a taste of first grade and some not far away from it.
“But by having some stability in our starting team, it means those young guys don’t have to be rushed, so they don’t get put in ahead of time.
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“More importantly, it means they’ll get what they earn, so they’re not getting free jerseys before they’re ready for it.
“If they earn the right to take the spot and leapfrog the guy in front of them, then they’ll get it and that can only be good for our club.”
As for the recruitment side of things, Hodges said getting in some outside backs was his priority.
“One or two outside backs would be really good,” he said.
“We’ve got a very good forward pack. With Shaun [Johnson] coming back and Ash Taylor in our system, we feel like we’ve got some decent halves, with what we already had.
“We’ve got some really talented young outside backs and we feel our wingers are really strong with Marcelo [Montoya] and Dallin [Watene-Zelezniak], but we need to make sure we’ve got genuine competition, to keep our young guys improving.
"So we’re certainly on the lookout for one or two more outside backs.”
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