I'm a very happy guy!!!
Just a realist.
Theres occasionally a little too much tunnel vision on here.
Good to have some balance to the argument.
That's what Wayne Bennett brought to the club.
Do people forget this? There was way too much boys club and hangers on. Too many poor decisions based on who are juniors and who are mates. I find it funny that the penny still hasn't dropped for most people on here.
Prior to Bennett arriving here it wasnt as though we werent competitive, 1985, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1999 we made the GF in all these years and we were very competitve in almost the whole of the 2000's. Our player policies are not so bad considering we have come up against proven salary cap cheats in the Bulldogs and the Storm and who knows how many others.
Imagine how many years these teams were cheating before they were even caught out I am certain that had Melbourne not rorted the cap we would have won the comp in the mid to late 2000's when it was evident that they were the only team we could not beat in the finals. There could be no guarantee that if Melbourne were allowed to continue cheating that we would have won in 2010.
We also lost a few juniors along the way that if we had been able to keep would of made us a very powerful club indeed most notable in recent years are Gordan Tallis, Glen and Brett Stewart, Josh Morris, Amos Roberts and Luke Patten.
Signing marquee players I dont see anything wrong with that, it is actually quite good to get some talent from outside especially if we dont have the means from within but to say that we were a total failure retaining our juniors is selling our players short for the most part they have been very good.
