Townsend certainly isn’t on unders and was released by the struggling Warriors. Dearden was unwanted by the struggling Broncos even though they desperately needed halves. Robson was released by the mediocre Dragons and Drinkwater was released early by the Storm. They might be having good seasons atm but their spine is currently a bunch of misfits thrown together who are performing well above expectations. I thought the whole reason why we didn’t re-sign Papali’i was because we weren’t sure if he could repeat his breakout season but the Cowboys misfits are guaranteed to be as good as our established spine players?
Drinkwater / Dearden aren’t miss fits, both were highly rated at 2 of the better resourced / better junior recruitment clubs in the NRL. Both were highly rated juniors. One is on 25 the other 21…pretty young still .
And both were unlucky at their previous clubs, Drinkwater was injured at a crucial time when Storm has spine positions available, while Dearden come into to first grade when Broncos coaching structure was poor……
While Robson wasn’t released by the dragons, he was massively rated by the club (and had an impressive junior rep career) and Cowboys simply beat them to his signature….dragons never wanted him to leave
All 3 played junior reps for Australia…