Who would you attempt to lose in order to improve the balance mate?
Where do I start?
I will firstly premise my argument by saying that the club appears to be trying to rectify the situation, but our current squad consists of:
* 3 fullbacks in our Top 17. Now sure they can all play other positions, but none are really noted players to bring the ball back from our own line, so aren't really players that should be playing wing. We need to get rid of at least one of them.
* No wingers in the Top 17 who are noted at being able to bring the ball back from our own line. Admittedly Ferguson will solve some of this next season
* 2 Centres who are probably in the top 5 highest paid players in the team. Which NRL Premiership Winning Team in recent seasons has had two Centres in the Top 5 players in their team? Storm had one in Chambers, Roosters had one Jennings, but outside of that none of them had Centres in the Top 5 paid players. It's a position that you need to find value in, not fill with superstars. Can we really afford to have Jennings and The Plane in the Centres?
* Any player who plays in a back 5 position who can't contribute to bringing the ball back from our own try line has no place in an NRL Team and should be shown the door immediately. We have 3 of them in our Top 25. Two of them are on probably Top 20 money.
* 2 Halves who essentially are probably in the Top 3 paid players in the team, who appear to essentially play the same way and both want to over call each other. Neither of them has any game management qualities. We need to get rid of one of them and replace them with someone more compatible to the one that remains. It's all about balance.
* Middle Forwards who in the most are all similar players, of similar quality, none of which would be considered great players. The last 5 NRL Premiers have had Bromwich, Fifita and Gallen, Scott and Taumolo, Burgess and Burgess, JWH. We have ZERO middle forwards remotely close to any of these players in Quality. Sure we've bought in Junior, but we really need Junior, Alvaro and Brown to step up to a whole new level next year if we're going anywhere.
* 2 Hookers of extremely limited ability, realistically neither are Top 17 quality, who are so ordinary that a 19 year old not even in the Top 30 is a superior player after only a couple of NRL games. Is Mahoney going to be good enough as a 20 year old to take us to a Premiership next season? Probably not. We probably need to look at someone with a lot of experience for a couple of years. Preferably someone who can bring leadership too (easier said than done.)
* Too many players in the Top 30 on too much money and too many players outside of the Top 17-20 that a young bloke on limited money can probably do just as good a job. This has been shown by GJennings, Mahoney and Niukore this year. All of them would be outside the Top 26 money wise. We need a Top 21 of high quality and then hope for the best with some young up and coming primarily cheaper players, We need 5 players on min wage (105K) and 4 players on the rookie wage ($87.5k), so that we can spend more money on higher quality Top 17 players.
* We have too many backs on too much money and too many forwards of a much lower quality to the backs. Look at the forwards in the teams that have one the last 5 NRL Premierships and compare to ours. It's embarrassing. Most Top Premiers have at least 2 of the Top 5 paid players in the forwards (including a 9 as a forward). At present we would have ZERO. It's all about balance.
* We also have ZERO Leadership….No offence to Gutho, but if he's the best option we've got for a Captain then that shows just how much we're lacking in quality leadership. We need to buy a couple of leaders ASAP.
I could go on...but hopefully the club sees that what they're doing isn't working and makes some changes
