Septimius Severus wrote:
Year 4 of 5 year plan - Change all your players.
Good luck Kai, and thanks for the memories.
I think there is always going to be a transitional element to that plan when it involves bridging such a steep gap from being a blank canvas at a yo-yo club in the championship, to the ultimate aim of being a regular playoff challenger. A lot of the UK players were all on 'overs', where they were paid above their value to take a risk on a club still in the championship at the time, and a lot of our imports were of such quality that they were always going to be on a timer until they were heading back to Oz. This year and next year for me were always going to be about adding the puzzle pieces of players that can be with us longer term with some short term x factor sprinkled in, something we've made some progress on with the additions of Hanley, Trout, Norman, Halton, McNamara and hopefully some from the likes of McIntosh, Brogan, Baxter etc can kick on.
There is an evident plan with the older heads in the team that they are getting 1 year deals offered on reduced terms back to their true market worth which they can take or leave - Charnley, O'Brien and Hughes(according to press) have accepted theirs and others like Hardaker and Holmes have opted to move on. It will be freeing up a pretty significant chunk of cap for us.
Whilst it's sad to see the likes of O'Donnell, Asiata etc move on it brings new opportunities for recruitment from a better bargaining standpoint, as an established SL club capable of being in the conversation for trophies and capable of developing fringe NRL players like Amone, O'Donnell, Ipape and Lam into genuine quality players. I'm very much looking forward to see what Chester and Lam are cooking up for next years additions - one thing for sure is you can bank on quality in our imports, the track record they have is incredible and shows no sign of fading with Moylan's addition this year.
