Rumours and Stuff

[85 Baby]

Meninga turning up to the presser in a knitted jumper to be unveiled as the new Perth coach was a real head-shaker. Wear a suit, FFS!

How can a man afford a suit if rugby league hasn’t given him anything?

 

[Noise]

Drink water is an absolute gun. Can he play 5/8??

He can. But he’s locked up until the end of 2027

 

[senior]

Drink water is an absolute gun. Can he play 5/8??

Did you close your eyes while he was defending

 

[Lemon Squash]

View attachment 102815

Matches his eyebrows nicely

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Is anyone with any knowledge able to tell me if we are having a look at Gagai? 1 year deal as he is essentially not wanted at Knights plus 1 Club option. The bloke is so experienced I think he’d be an astute signing those bucks.

He is definitely still a first grader, but also definitely on the decline, as far as his statistical output.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

I still remember the great Morgan Harper on his way to the Airport to go play in England. But our much revered recruitment team lead by killa from Manila MON & Jim’s Mowing aka VICTA, well they said NO NOT ON MY WATCH. And they drove out on Mons trolley to the airport (similar to dumb and dumber on the bike) and signed that amazing talent HARPER. And the rest as they say is history. Harper went on to do what he does best.

we are so blessed

*Lomax

 

[The Predictor]

I read on SMH today that Tui from Storm is being shopped atm. Any interest??

Nope

 

[Tiger5150]

Wow.

Definitely not Bateman.
Another bloke you paid $600k per year for, and he was never the same again. Still good, no longer great.

To be fair, probably Mitch made him look better than he ever was?

No doubt he had a better time running off Mitch than Wakeham/Will Smith/Brooks.

I would have loved to have seen him working with Galvin/Luai/Latu

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Latu just re-signed until 2027.

I recall you rated him very early and black booked him.

Promising signs

Pretty cool to be in the top 30 before the age of 24. Andrew Davey didn't manage it.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Geeze we got lucky there. How did we get him when he was already in the Cows system ?

View attachment 102785

LINK

Poached or did they let him go? He turned 20 at our club, so he was already an adult when we signed him..

William Latu

Born: 12 July 2003 (Ipswich, Queensland, Australia) Junior Club: Darwin Brothers Honours 2018 U15 Australian Schoolboys B (Darwin High) Under-21 Team Years App T G GK% FG Pts Townsville Colts 2022 …

18thman.com

 

[Poupou Escobar]

well he was in a system that already had 2 of the best young backrowers in the game ( Nanai and Luki )

That's a good point. He was born in the same year as Nanai, and only two years younger than Luki.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

When I see players like Harper, I thank my stars I wasn't athletically inclined. Imagine playing through your childhood, teens and 20s to not make it anywhere.

Is a 60 game NRL career a good or bad thing? He won't have made enough money from footy to stop working altogether, but on the other hand, has it really interfered with his scaffolding career?

 

[Poupou Escobar]

well according to you probably none? ....amrite?

Well we had enough to retain Drown if he had activated his option, then we had enough to sign Galvin (but not to increase our offer), then we activated JAC's club option.

you do realise that we lost or about to lose the following out of a cap and really only added 1 blue chip signing who ended up coming for less than the deal before..

Guth
RCG
Sivo
Drown
Cartwright

We also extended Moses, and signed Lomax, Walker and Williams. Do you really think we got these four on the cheap? Why would any of them stay/come here for less than market value? We also upgraded Tuivaiti and extended Penisini.

2 of those are spine players...we also replaced our 9 with a veteren coming of an ACL on half the coin after our 22 season,

and you believe we can't fit a decent under the cap?

Mahoney would've been on unders, and Hodgson wasn't coming off any sort of injury when we signed him. He busted his knee in the first game of the season after he had already signed.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

I have a feeling the club have been sitting this longer than the last re signing announcements.

the cynic in me believes this is an attempt to stop a bararge of emails from members asking them why we couldn't dip our hat in the ring for KPP.

The club would get sick of explaining that matching offers from desperate clubs is how your salary cap blows out.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Btw apparently Iongi played 5/8 in the juniors so has experience there and maybe his talents are better suited in that position?

If he was moved to fullback, there must've been a reason.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Only had a win percentage at 37% or 3 wins with us.

Maybe we win the GF without him?!

Our win rate without him was only 25%

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Your argument only works if we’ve spent less then or equal to what we’ve lost since our grand final year. Do you think that’s the case?

Of course we have. The reason we were so good back then was because we built the squad with youth and so had a bunch of merkins on unders. Once they were off contract, we couldn't afford to pay them all what they were worth.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

We get it

All Rugby League fans are deadshits with no idea.

Do all rugby league fans think clubs don't need experienced backups? I thought it was just most fans.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

They could have had Waqa Blake, Joel Reddy or Ryan Morgan playing in the centres and it would still be the same result.

None of them were bad players either. Bellamy thought Morgan was good enough to use as a backup after we got rid of him.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

$500K at Tigers

*$800k