Yes but not because they have superstars and we don't. It's because they're spending a lot more on players than us (due to TPAs) and so can afford some superstars as well as putting good first graders around them.
Says who? Manly made the finals for ten straight years and won two comps without any genuine superstars. Their highest paid players in that time would have been Lyon (an outside back), Stewart (only eight Origins in his career) and Orford. All three players looked like stars playing in a team with no weaknesses, but managed little (or nothing) at rep level. Foran and DCE had their premiership success while young and on relatively modest contracts.
None of these guys would have been on Hayne/Inglis/Smith money, because they weren't as good. They just looked great because the quality around them picked everybody up.
Don't focus too much on 'solid, honest' players. I think you're ignoring the grey area between Michael Gordon and Jarryd Hayne. I advocate spending the entire cap. With players 18-25 averaging $120k each that leaves a salary cap of over $5.8M for the other 17 players. You really believe you can't win a comp with 17 players worth $300k+ each? Jack up the highest paid half dozen to $500k and the rest are still worth over $250k each. That's probably more than Semi Radradra is costing under the cap.
The more you're spending on your best players the less you have to spend on your weakest players. IMO it is constantly proven that your worst handful of players are at least as influential as your best, especially in defence.
As for our team this year, if you removed Foran and Jennings, and replaced them with Townsend and Ryan f**king Morgan, plus kept Peats and Paulo, then it would have won as many games, plus been under the cap from round one.
If you think we would have won as many games without Foran (and his 'leadership') what was the point in buying him, I wonder?
The thing is that, in order for us to assemble a team like Cronulla (maybe no 'superstars', but a number of origin players and potential origin players) we would (according to your own assertions) need to be paying them more under the cap than Cronulla are. Short answer is - we couldn't do it. We can't assemble a side with six $500K players and eleven $200K players (in fact, given that not all players' contracts end at the same time, I don't think any club can).
I think this makes it even more imperative for a club (particularly ours) to have at least one 'superstar' in its ranks. Don't get too hung up on the word 'superstar'. I'm talking about players ranging from Jarryd Hayne, Jonathon Thurston, Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk, all the way down to Greg Inglis, Jamie Lyon, James Tedesco, Josh Dugan, Sam Burgess, James Maloney, Andrew Fifita, Wade Grahame, Jack Bird, Milford, Hunt, Darius Boyd, Pearce, Boyd Cordner, Papalli, etc, etc, etc - who are all better than $500K players. Without at least one, two or three of these sorts of players in your side, you can't win a premiership these days. And, as you say, the more players you have that are under, say, $250K, the more imperative it is to have one or two stars or superstars.
