Rumoured Targets 3

[The Axe of Druss]

Luai is an absolute top shelf half. They are very rare.

a spine of
Bula
Galvin
Luai
Api

Will win a decent whack of games.

The spine is good but their outside backs and forward pack suuuuuuuuucks and only look worse for 2025

 

[The Axe of Druss]

It’s a lot easier to just blatantly make up shit and attribute it to staff writers.

The article is literally reporting on what Rothfield said on NRL360

Its regurgitative rubbish

 

[macavity]

The spine is good but their outside backs and forward pack suuuuuuuuucks and only look worse for 2025

A good spine can get wins with average backs and forwards.

Good backs and forwards don’t win with a shit spine.

good halves are so rare I expect Luai to get them half a dozen wins on his own.

 

[Dr Dr Gimedanews]

A good spine can get wins with average backs and forwards.

Good backs and forwards don’t win with a shit spine.

good halves are so rare I expect Luai to get them half a dozen wins on his own.

yes and yes. I presume this will be the aim of the shake up- redirect money towards the critical spine positions.

Average salary+ spent on players younger on the up, developing, with more upside potential and not on pea hearted, average at best, half baked journeymen.

 

[aqua_duck]

I think so, but.......there must be 1 "expert" that advises or convinces the committee of the value/cap wise decision to employ PLAYER X - that's the dude that's got to go.

A lot of the time player values are a projection, there’d be someone who’s pretty informed about what other players are getting paid at other clubs and there’d be a determination the player were trying to sign is of similar quality. I think what people need to remember as well is most contracts are skewed in such a way where the highest paid years are at the backend of the contract so for example if D Saf is getting $850k next year that’s probably the peak yearly salary of that contract.

 

[Mr_Knightside]

In fairness to club management, hindsight is always 20:20 isn’t it. I can understand why a lot of these decisions were made in the first place. They only seem really stupid if they don’t work out…

Brailey was an excellent young hooker when we first signed him and was definitely on the up and up. It was re-signing him so early after his first knee injury which was the problem, we should have waited longer to see if he could push on and improve, but now after a second major knee injury he’s basically cooked. But there aren’t many quality 9s out there so I can sort of understand why they were eager to keep him in the first place.

Hastings was the right guy to come up at the right time tbh. There’s so few elite halves out there and whilst he’s not in that category he was certainly viewed as a good first grade quality halfback at the time and an on-field leader, and let’s face it, he definitely did what he was expected to do in his first year with us. But once again an injury has come along and now he’s not the same player.

DSaf was an Origin rep when he signed his most recent deal, and if we didn’t offer him a good deal and a number of years then another club most certainly would have. Then we’d all be jumping up and down about how we let a rep quality local junior leave the club. At the time of signing the deal he was looking like a top 3 front rower in he game and we couldn’t have predicted that his form would drop off the way it has.

It’s a shame that it’s gotten to where it has with these guys that they now need a tap on the shoulder but the reality is that the alternative options out there aren’t much better.

 

[aqua_duck]

The spine is good but their outside backs and forward pack suuuuuuuuucks and only look worse for 2025

I think what you need to take into consideration is the age of a lot of their players, Galvin, Latu Fainu, Da Silva, Laulilii are all teenagers, Bula, Pole, Samuela Fainu, Sione Fainu, Turuva, Faaatape and Matamua all in their early 20s so there should be alot of natural progression in that nucleus over the next few years. Whilst I don’t think they’ll be good for atleast 12-18 months I think the foundations are in place