I don't necessarily agree with that Martli. Maybe in rugby league circles that might be a fair call, not so in football. Football administrators are notoriously fickle and short-minded. It only takes 6 months of under-performance before the ever-fatal "He has the board's full support" comes out. The problem is, if you get sacked from a club like Wellington which is in one of the poorer leagues around the globe, there's not many financial avenues for him to explore. In football, people forget very quickly the good times but are unbelievably quick to remember the painful times. The issue for Herbert now is there is an expectation mandated against Wellington's A-League performance, whereas before it was patience and guile to set the foundations.
As for Manu, I believe we'll keep him, if we're astute in salary cap management. If the radio sport story holds credence and Matai is coming to the Warriors, lets call it quits in our recruitment at that point. They are talking about props, but we should resign Royal for another year (he's probably more consistent and reliable than most of the props names that have bandied around anyhow, plus his value won't be high as he's keen for another shot)... this would leave us with a propping 'stock' of Rapira, Packer, Royal, Matulino, Latimore, Poching and I dare say Mark Ioane who is enormously impressive in the 20s. Plus, we should keep faith in the 20s in that it seems we have a good production line of props that come through that team. That way we have money to upgrade Maloney, resign Vatuvei, and keep our other young bucks as well. Essentially, they've talked a good talk about this being a development club, if that's the case, surely the days of the likes of Tony Martin, Toddy Byrne etc, who are good players but lack the X factor are done with, and we can ensure we keep our best.
