Rumours (signings, sackings & other NRL stuff)

[Tigerm]

This is interesting, if true.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...y/news-story/08444b481dbd01e8e53c4be36f4420d5

Wests Tigers should be Sydney’s NRL giants but they’re lightweights. Because of this flawed strategy

Extract
To identify the cause of their failure one must look at their roster strategy.

Across the last three seasons, the Tigers have had the highest average of squad experience. Their 2018 (2289 caps), 2019 (2534 caps) and 2020 (2383) lists were loaded with expensive imports.

The problem with buying experience? You are paying Josh Reynolds, Moses Mbye, Joseph Leilua, Chris McQueen and Russell Packer for what they have done, not what they will do.

Premiership-winning rosters of the past 30 years show 1900 caps is the sweet spot for experience. The 1992 Brisbane Broncos squad had just 1538 games of experience. Yet the Tigers persevere with their strategy of buying big reputations at the cost of losing talented rookies.

The whole article is us and our problems.

 

[WA Tiger]

This is interesting, if true.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...y/news-story/08444b481dbd01e8e53c4be36f4420d5

Wests Tigers should be Sydney’s NRL giants but they’re lightweights. Because of this flawed strategy

Extract
To identify the cause of their failure one must look at their roster strategy.

Across the last three seasons, the Tigers have had the highest average of squad experience. Their 2018 (2289 caps), 2019 (2534 caps) and 2020 (2383) lists were loaded with expensive imports.

The problem with buying experience? You are paying Josh Reynolds, Moses Mbye, Joseph Leilua, Chris McQueen and Russell Packer for what they have done, not what they will do.

Premiership-winning rosters of the past 30 years show 1900 caps is the sweet spot for experience. The 1992 Brisbane Broncos squad had just 1538 games of experience. Yet the Tigers persevere with their strategy of buying big reputations at the cost of losing talented rookies.

We havnt bought on big reputations ...our signings have all had mediocre reputations ...if we have a big reputation on the line which has proven to be the hardest part we must reel him in, Madges and the clubs rep will depend on what happens with JAC ..They had better not fk it up

 

[Old Time Tiger]

When was the last time we signed a CURRENT gamebreaking rep player when one became available ?? JAC IS one such player. ....paying him so called FB money is a no brainer regardless of whether he plays there or on the wing.

Das, this almost answers the post from Tiger05:

I reckon the opposite. It's players like Reynolds and Packer who aren't first graders who we are paying as stars that are the issue.

Reynolds and Packer were not CURRENT gamebreaking rep players but what they were were experienced players. 05 states they aren't first graders.

The were signed as first graders, they were signed for their experience, Packer and Matulino (NZ Representative) were signed as the experience forwards needed to bring the younger forwards on after the departure of Woods. Reynolds came on board, he was an established 1st grader, they 'lost' Moses and needed experience in the spine.

They aren't first graders !! you forget 05 that these 3 guys were very unfortunate when it came to injuries. The same thing could happen next year with any new signing.

Das, I'm with you, paying JAC FB money is a no brainer.

 

[Trollhammaren]

This is interesting, if true.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...y/news-story/08444b481dbd01e8e53c4be36f4420d5

Wests Tigers should be Sydney’s NRL giants but they’re lightweights. Because of this flawed strategy

Extract
To identify the cause of their failure one must look at their roster strategy.

Across the last three seasons, the Tigers have had the highest average of squad experience. Their 2018 (2289 caps), 2019 (2534 caps) and 2020 (2383) lists were loaded with expensive imports.

The problem with buying experience? You are paying Josh Reynolds, Moses Mbye, Joseph Leilua, Chris McQueen and Russell Packer for what they have done, not what they will do.

Premiership-winning rosters of the past 30 years show 1900 caps is the sweet spot for experience. The 1992 Brisbane Broncos squad had just 1538 games of experience. Yet the Tigers persevere with their strategy of buying big reputations at the cost of losing talented rookies.

Good article that. Spot on on all accounts.

Once Pascoe (should be first to go), Reynolds, Packer, Mbye, Benji, BJ and the like are out the door some happy days ahead hopefully.

 

[Das Hassler]

And not every fullback is on a million. ..that figure gets thrown up as typical pay...Tedesco is on that and no doubt more but not likely Mitchell got anywhere close to that out of souths once they knew he wanted to be there. JAC is on 400 something at the Storm...double that and he'd still be a bargain.

 

[Das Hassler]

Changing the culture....or more to the point the "perception" of a longtime underachieving club is like doing a 180 with an oil tanker...it's slow. You have to go through some pain ( read
.pay overs) to bring the first essential signings then a few more have the confidence to come over as well....that's pretty much what GC have had to do and David Fafita was the overpaid drawer. ..they've signed some quality off the back of that...it's not all about brown paper bags with the chooks and melbourne...talent goes to those clubs to be a part of what they've got going on...we HAVE to transform this club into somewhere talented players want to come to and have to stay focused on that endgoal regardless of how long it takes....that's what the chooks and melbourne are..simple as that.

Oh...and to add. ..an experienced coach with that single minded goal is No. 1....we appear to at least have one of those...some may disagree

 

[Tigerm]

Good article that. Spot on on all accounts.

Once Pascoe (should be first to go), Reynolds, Packer, Mbye, Benji, BJ and the like are out the door some happy days ahead hopefully.

I gotta admit, I don’t believe Pascoe has that much to do with talent identification as the journalist and G Jack made out.

I think/thought Madge and the the football staff were doing that and then Pascoe dots the i’s and crosses the t’s to get them on board. I would of thought he had enough on his plate without doing this.

At the time of signing Packer, Maulito? And Reynolds, I believe they come about from Cleary and everyone thought they were good buys. (McQueen was a Taylor signing)

But if it’s true, then yes he should be tapped.

 

[Das Hassler]

I gotta admit, I don’t believe Pascoe has that much to do with talent identification as the journalist and G Jack made out.

I think/thought Madge and the the football staff were doing that and then Pascoe dots the i’s and crosses the t’s to get them on board. I would of thought he had enough on his plate without doing this.

At the time of signing Packer, Maulito? And Reynolds, I believe they come about from Cleary and everyone thought they were good buys. (McQueen was a Taylor signing)

But if it’s true, then yes he should be tapped.

Cleary made sole responsibility for signings a condition to coming. That was due to the interference of the board ( of the day) in Potter and Taylor's jobs....Cleary signed the "Cleary" signings and that was considered a good thing at the time. ..prior to that the Wests and Balmain board members couldn't even agree on what food to serve at board meetings let alone engineer the success and culture of a football team.

 

[Tigerm]

Cleary made sole responsibility for signings a condition to coming. That was due to the interference of the board ( of the day) in Potter and Taylor's jobs....Cleary signed the "Cleary" signings and that was considered a good thing at the time. ..prior to that the Wests and Balmain board members couldn't even agree on what food to serve at board meetings let alone engineer the success and culture of a football team.

Yes, that would be right to, you are not going to have a dog and bark yourself, I.e. sign the bloke on big money, then go out and recruit the players he is going to have.
It all seemed to calm when GO came on board, though apparently she had it in for Farah (supposedly).
Anyway, I think we are at least heading in the right direction, just gunna take more time unfortunately.

JAC and Tamou are just the bullets to be loaded, if we get both.

 

[Trollhammaren]

I gotta admit, I don’t believe Pascoe has that much to do with talent identification as the journalist and G Jack made out.

I think/thought Madge and the the football staff were doing that and then Pascoe dots the i’s and crosses the t’s to get them on board. I would of thought he had enough on his plate without doing this.

At the time of signing Packer, Maulito? And Reynolds, I believe they come about from Cleary and everyone thought they were good buys. (McQueen was a Taylor signing)

But if it’s true, then yes he should be tapped.

The CEO's job isn't talent identification, no doubt, however, he's been the common factor on all this mess. He signs off on all these terrible contracts, and frankly, I can't remember him doing anything for this club at all.

He pipes up once in a blue moon to have a sook about our ex-players or the fact umbrellas should be banned from Leichhardt Oval. Really tackling the big issues eh. Don't rate him. Get someone else who has an idea.

 

[BrotherJim05]

I gotta admit, I don’t believe Pascoe has that much to do with talent identification as the journalist and G Jack made out.

I think/thought Madge and the the football staff were doing that and then Pascoe dots the i’s and crosses the t’s to get them on board. I would of thought he had enough on his plate without doing this.

At the time of signing Packer, Maulito? And Reynolds, I believe they come about from Cleary and everyone thought they were good buys. (McQueen was a Taylor signing)

But if it’s true, then yes he should be tapped.

Yeah that article makes some good points but they are connecting dots to the tigers that I don't think is completely fair.

Pascoe's job is not to identify talent and recruit players. His responsibility is largely the commercial success of the Tigers. Recruitment and retention is the responsibility of Hartigan and Madge - Pascoe obviously is involved but part of being a CEO is defering to your colleague's field of expertise.

I also get that we have a huge fan and junior base, but unlike most other clubs it is fractured by the old Balmain vs Wests history. Other clubs have the benefit of their stadium, training ground, leagues club and fans all being in the one area. Then you've got clubs like Penrith who have this benefit with the added bonus of being able to expand West and bring in all the NSW country regions under their umbrella.

We don't have that luxury and to be honest, I don't ever seeing it happening.

But the biggest problem, which I truly believe is finally being addressed, is that we pay overs for players who are either past their best or don't really want to put in any sort of effort.

We have a lot of exciting young players coming through, and if they buy into what Madge is doing and have the mental toughness to handle his methods, we will be in great shape. Tamoa is a great signing as we will need some leaders on the field to guide these kids, but we also need players like JAC who still have their best football ahead of them and have that positive, Alpha-male quality that will help keep a young players wanting to play together.

 

[stryker]

Harry will go probably go back for the year and then I’d say he will come back.

All going to plan, on/by start of 2022 we will have the start of a side on its way and I’d think he might want to be part of that.

I don’t think Madge has lost too many players over the years he didn’t want to keep. No stampede from Souths under his command.

Those players of ours whinging about Madge, I’ll drive them home myself.

Honestly, if Harry stays here he is dumb. He has great options and no ties.

 

[stryker]

I think there’s a lot merit in Chin going to fullback. He can do a lot.
.

Yep and Cameron Smith would make a sensational winger. You been huffing glue again?

 

[Tiger05]

But the biggest problem, which I truly believe is finally being addressed, is that we pay overs for players who are either past their best or don't really want to put in any sort of effort.

I don't think it's effort. I think we don't get value for money out of our highest paid players. That leaves you with an unbalanced squad. I think Benji being here has covered this up a little as well because I don't think he was overpaid.

I'm not worried about signing or missing out on single players. Latrell was a big loss. JAC may be a big loss. Matterson was a big loss. The Turd was the biggest loss by far. The thing is those players haven't and won't turn us into a top quality team. We need multiple signings or quality juniors coming through which you develop or purchase.

I think signings like Luciano and Doueihi and even Kepaoa and Blore show we are heading in the right direction.

I think people like simplistic solutions to a pretty tough problem which is trying to develop a winning professional sports team. It's especially hard because of salary cap rorts as well. We can become a quality team but it's going to take time and calm consistent constructive actions especially around managing the salary cap.

 

[Tiger05]

Honestly, if Harry stays here he is dumb. He has great options and no ties.

This to me is one of our problems but I don't think it would influence Harry at all. It's the pessimistic attitude that we are so bad. You could easily state we are a club on the up and we've given Harry a great start to his career.

 

[Tiger Ted]

This to me is one of our problems but I don't think it would influence Harry at all. It's the pessimistic attitude that we are so bad. You could easily state we are a club on the up and we've given Harry a great start to his career.

Empirically we have regressed.This season we are finishing lower on table than last season & astonishingly our defence is as bad if not worse than its ever been & this under the stewardship of a coach renowned as been defence oriented.A major concern is that after 2 yrs been coached by a hard taskmaster the team is devoid of backbone or grit.

 

[Tiger05]

Empirically we have regressed.This season we are finishing lower on table than last season & astonishingly our defence is as bad if not worse than its ever been & this under the stewardship of a coach renowned as been defence oriented.A major concern is that after 2 yrs been coached by a hard taskmaster the team is devoid of backbone or grit.

Yep we've gone backwards on the park. The negative attitude that no one wants to come here or anyone good has to leave is BS though. We just signed Tamou on good dollars for us. I think we are well in the hunt to get JAC.

 

[Das Hassler]

Talk of us going after Rapana if melbourne don't budge on JAC ....certainly no comparison but maybe he'd at least get us some value out of JJ by rekindling their combination....or not

 

[stryker]

This to me is one of our problems but I don't think it would influence Harry at all. It's the pessimistic attitude that we are so bad. You could easily state we are a club on the up and we've given Harry a great start to his career.

Upon what evidence would I make that silly claim? Had Harry not played for us this year we may well have got the spoon.
A rookie should not be the best player in the team...it is terrible for their development.

 

[Tiger05]

Upon what evidence would I make that silly claim? Had Harry not played for us this year we may well have got the spoon.
A rookie should not be the best player in the team...it is terrible for their development.

Harry is pretty good. I reckon he has enjoyed his time here as well. It might be good for his development. Maybe playing here has been better for him than staying at Melbourne.