It horrifies me if he is allowed to sign a short term deal with Penrith or the like for 2023 and then moves to Titans potentially with a premiership as that rewards his behaviour with a potential shot at a Premiership and shows players and agents can do what they like.
But we can't leave him on sideline for 2.5 years as his consumes too much salary cap.
My view is unless he signs a 2.5 year deal at one club and we get given a player or two as compensation by that club he should be made to sit out rest of 2023 while a deal is cut with another club for 2024 and 2025.
I do not think we should try and get another star halfback. Given 2023 is already a disaster we should use it to blood our existing backline players and pick our best halves combination from within our existing squad. Star halfbacks are rare and someone like Luke Brooks is not going to bring us a winning culture or provide the on field and off field leadership and he would want same salary that Hunt is on which makes the same financial outcome for a lesser player with no step up in leadership.
We should get a quality forward from the team who is taking him who costs about $0.5m per year and who is a strong player who will deliver consistently warranting selection but not necessarily a superstar. Solid and consistent to add starch to our pack. The team that takes him should also subsidise the salary of that player for say $250k. That means for 2024 and 2025 we have Hunt's wage of $0.85m plus the $0.25m subsidy giving us $1.1m in our salary cap for 2024 and 2025 to recruit with and buy a hooker and hopefully contribute towards another young forward.
There are four things which if changed would dramatically improve our on field performance in short term:
1) Improve culture and team loyalty - We will have to leave this Flanagan's hands and he is probably the best coach that was available to address this so lets cross our fingers and call this a work in progress.
2) We need a solid pack. Currently we have three players delivering consistently without being brilliant. That is hardly an environment that will foster them to work harder. We should therefore get a subsidised solid forward from the team that takes Hunt to insert some starch into our pack and who sets a baseline for training and metres gained in games for the rest of the pack. Does not have to be a superstar, we cannot afford another forward who is diamonds one game and dross another.
3) We need a good hooker. That is what the freed up $1.1m in salary cap should be used to recruit. Again does not have to be a superstar hooker but needs to be a hooker who delivers consistency, provides good service to our young backs and who works his butt off to play good minutes. This demonstrates how disastrous letting McInnes go was and letting Damien Cook go before him.
4) A strong halves pairing. This unfortunately is the conundrum we cannot solve in short term. However, if have a decent pack, good culture and a good hooker we will be stronger than we are now.
However if Flanagan delivers as we hope and we have a solid pack with good culture our hopes of recruiting halves with potential or even a superstar will be improved. If we recruit a superstar now we won't have budget to improve our pack and we will likely have a mercenary halfback who will do nothing for culture.
Our focus should be on getting a solid pack that has depth and which delivers strong defence and Lays the foundation for the backline. That is something that we could use this clusterf*&@ to improve and from there we will have to back Flanagan and Nathan Brown (if the board ever gets around to appointing him as recruitment manager) to recruit young players from our nursery of juniors to grow juniors.
Finally, I think unfortunately we are going to have pay out Flanagan's contract with Manly and get him on board with the club ASAP. Leave Carr coaching the team for 2023 and Flanagan needs to focus on establishing an off field team that he believes will deliver and start focusing on development pathways and way forward. Plus Flanagan needs to be assessing the team for future leaders to determine who is going to be new club captain in 2024 without the stress of trying to get wins with a half broken team.
Any player recruited from now on, must be be assessed by Flanagan as to whether he is going to fit the culture he wants to establish and only then should they be recruited.
If we can these actions, I think we will have a long term hope. Our new training centre will be one of the best in the league so players will have best facilities and resources, we have no debt and we have a plan for growing our financial position. So if we can address culture and our pack in short term this will contribute to a solid foundation and creating a club that other players will want to play for.
Unfortunately there are no short term solutions and it is going to take 5 years to turn round this mess and create a winning club and probably another 2 to 3 on top of that to create a club capable of challenging for premierships.
Our focus needs to not be on short term success but on establishing culture and leadership within the players and playing staff combined with the best facilities in the NRL. That will reduce the dependency on individuals and create a team that wins regardless of changes in on field and off field players.
I am still hopeful that while Hunt's behaviour lacks leadership, it does give us a genuine chance to fundamentally change our team and leverage our strong long term plans, this is the time to change things and stop trying to look for the magic pill and just swallow the bitter medicine. It took us 10 years to hit rock bottom and it will take us a similar time period to climb out if we want a sustainable future.
