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.