So easy to be wise in hindsight about Peats, but BA was not to know that a few weeks later Foz's life was going to majorly hit the fan and not want to honour his contract for 2017+.
Sure, one could say that and they might be right. But one could also say that he has known the guy for years and had a very close and personal relationship with him, so how come he didn't pickup on what was going on? After all it is his job and fiduciary duty to our club to catch potential club destructive issues from happening.
Sure you can't see everything, but from my understanding, many of Foz's issues have been around for years, while he was at Manly. So Arthur, it would seem, isn't to cluey about character analysis.
So like I said, he makes mistakes and some of those mistakes have been very damaging to our roster. Therefore the jury is out on whether he has made the right decision in regards to opt out on Hayne at the moment.
My gut reaction is he has blundered massively. But that is my opinion. I hope Arthur can find those players that I mentioned above by next season. And I mean next season and we become at least a top 4 team, If not then I and I'm sure many others would conclude that he failed.
Why by next season? Because if it doesn't happen that quickly, then we are still in a rebuilding phase. So therefore he should of signed the greatest player in the freakin world(probably ever) and Corey Norman and built the team around them. You know, kind of like Melbourne have 3 world class players in their spine, style. I doesn't seem to have hurt them to much.
Not to mention Hayne is beyond the run of the mill elite player. He has proven what an asset for a clubs bottom line, interest/popularity, marketing, sponsorship and ratings he is. Hardly something that we should be passing on, considering the shit perception we have as a club created for ourselves and the $10m loss we have just for next season.
Yeah seems like a great decision so far by our club. We may have a half decent season next year if we can pick up a couple of decent players, but short of a top 4 finish, it would be just average, something that Hayne and what he brings never is.