Huge no to Royce Hunt, not what we need at all. Stefano huge yes, still only 23, will hit his peak in the next 3-4 years and will continue to improve. I'd be looking at getting Stefano as well as someone like Griffin Neame with Cowboys in a huge cap squeeze. They are going to have to take care of deals for Cotter, Robson, Holmes and Neame all off contract at the same time, with all but Holmes due big upgrades. They simply can't keep all of Robson, Neame and Cotter considering no one will take Taumalolo off their hands. Then, theoretically if we had Stefano and Neame for example in 2026, you'd be looking at T Couchman as your lock, with Ryan on the bench considering players like RFM and BMM probably aren't here anymore by then. You could even fit another current lower grade player onto the bench (Loko, Latu, Stewart, for example), and this is how you progress your younger players through into first grade
Neame and Stef would be good targets
especially if you could get one for 2025 even though both contracted till end of 2025
who knows if they have triggers or player options. The media has been saying Stef can walk end of 2024 if Tigers have not accumulated a certain amount of wins as per his contract
our hard line re trying to offload Lawrie and equally only wanting to do a year by year for JDB makes sense if we are trying to land a significant prop for 2025 still and props with years to stay
Royce Hunt is still a possibility if we can’t get Plan A above
he still has that Michael Wryman type role for us that he could do for a couple seasons at maybe $500k pa ?
Sele and Molo ain’t going to be the starting props that will get us in a GF I don’t believe
I suspect we have both FMolo and Sele at no more than $500k pa which gives us great flexibility re cap vs starting vs bench vs say lock for Sele.
they both seem to be injured quite a bit last few years and even when Sele was at our club back in the day had niggling injuries with his backs from memory?
that’s tricky for us on us having them go in and out of the team as we are not a Penrith that can carry that easily.
STEF, LIDS, NEAME
LUC, SUa
SELE
JDB, COUCHMEN, FMolo, RFM
now that looks interesting
king Toga a 2025 or 2026 prop in FG is a big question to be answered ?
move Lawrie on for 2025 / 2026
Give JDB a better $ for 2025 only