We should be looking to upgrade every position. Unfortunately a lot of the players we would like to see go are contracted for next year and beyond. Talk of shopping these players to other clubs is laughable. They are here because they can't get a run at other better clubs. We would not be able to off-load them unless we paid a significant part of their salary. This is something we used to do regularly and I'm fairly certain no one wants to see that situation happen again. Besides, it makes very poor business sense, long-term.
If it was me running the club I'd target someone high profile with leadership ability, preferably proven. I would have moved the earth to go after someone like Keary. Give him $1 million a season and then add performance targets up to say another $500k depending on where we finish. I know the roosters re-signed him prior to him hitting the market but surely we could have put something in the media somewhere saying "Luke, we can't negotiate yet but before you put pen to paper give us a chance to talk. We will make you the highest paid player in the game and build our team around you. If you want the challenge of a lifetime wait until we can talk to you" He'd probably still stay at the roosters but at least I'd be happy to see the club being proactive. We need a player the likes of when Mal Meninga signed with the Raiders to have any chance of turning the club around.
As it stands I would start signing the players in our team to their real worth. If they leave so be it. Let another team over-pay them. When we get busted by the NRL for salary cap violations for not spending the required 90% of the cap I'd take them the court for restraint of trade. Why should we be over-spending? What gives the NRL the right to dictate how much we should be paying to players who are frankly lucky to be playing first grade? Why can't we put the money left over into junior / overseas - identification / development? I know they grant us the money each year but surely we should have the freedom to spend it the best way we see fit.
The last couple of years we have punched above our weight massively by finishing 9th. The roster we have is bottom 2. It's amazing we haven't claimed at least 1 spoon in the last 5 years. Players at this club accept mediocrity. It's time we started paying them like the mediocre players they are. I'd even go as far as structuring new contracts on the minimum wage and then and old fashioned win/loss bonus like the old days. I wouldn't be paying very much for a loss though.
Anyway that's my 2 cents. Unless we do something completely different we'll be having this conversation every year for the next (insert number here) years.
I see where you are coming from mate, but your entire thought process is based on the fact that players of the well-sort-after calibre would even consider coming to Tigers. For example - there is literally nothing anyone could do to convince Luke Keary to come to the Tigers. Nothing. Even IF we had 1.5 million in cap space a year to offer him, he still wouldn't take it. Why on earth would he move from a well established, winning club like the Roosters to play here? I'd honestly be willing to bet Keary would rather play at Roosters on 800k a year than 1.5 Million at the Tigers. Yes, it's a lot of money, but when he looks back on his career, he will be more pleased with establishing a dynasty at the Roosters and eventually playing Origin.
My point is that we are in a total rebuild. We took a punt with Cleary's method of just "paying whatever to get them on the bus", and it failed. The only hope I have for the Tigers is that we learnt our lesson and won't make the same mistake.
FMD the solution is:
1. Back Madge 100%. He is the captain and we will salute him as the ship sinks if it comes to that
2. Get rid of all this motherf**king, bullsht, over-paid, Jason Failure/Chinny-Mc Chin Chin legacy deadwood
3. Use the freed up money to sign up all the promising young talent on really good contracts for young players but small enough we hedge our bets across the park
Eventually we will make the 8 with a squad of really good young players who are all legit passionate about the Tigers and what we stand for. You can already start to see it with players like Nofa, Aloai, Twal etc.
I feel like the club is taking this same strategy when you see signings like Stefano from Parra. I feel there will be many more signings like this to come.
