Phoenix Crossland discussion

He was given a significant deal to play hooker when it looked like Crossland was moving to lock. Since then Crossland has further established himself as a more than competent starting hooker (potentially even an 80 minute one), Graham has emerged as a quality backup and has some already wanting him in over Smith (and I'd bet will still be on less than half of Smith's salary next year), and Hagan has put himself into calculations as soon as next year with his development. That's not even factoring in Arthur who I assume will be gone.

The cap is tight as is, if you can get similar or better production out of Graham in that role for much cheaper then it's hard to justify spending that money on what would essentially be a backup half who's ideally not even in your 17 every week (even if he is a good one). Would be great to keep everyone but if space needs to be made to keep more important players then Smith is an obvious candidate.

We haven't even seen him play a minute at hooker here yet, though. Maybe he's great at it and solidifies himself in the team.
 
Literally no one has tried to say we definitively can’t, or even that they want Smith gone. Discussing roster management on a fan forum seems pretty standard. Is it okay for us to talk about players’ performances or is that reserved for professional coaches, too?
 
slotmachine said:
a) will Smith be happy playing a limited role for the next 3.5 years or look for a starting gig somewhere else? I guess that all hinges on what his role ends up being and I won't profess to know what he's thinking. Time will tell.

b) JSaf, Dom, Best, Lucas, McEwen can all negotiate with other clubs from Nov 1. If we can keep them all and Smith happy days. If keeping Smith means losing one of our starting players then moving him on becomes a real point of discussion.
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Why are we questioning POS cap management? I’m sure when we signed d bags he would of looked 1 year down the road and have a plan this forum is full of negative worry worts
 
slotmachine said:
Afraid not. @jamesgould time to shut it down
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danknights said:
Its a 50/50. Things are happening so fast so close to the ruck, if we got a penalty I get it. If we don't I kinda understand aswell.
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I agree, could see it going either way, since they talk about this duty of care thing now.

I think the difference was probably as Frank says, that neither player was looking at each other. Difficult for anyone to have a duty of care when neither of them knew there was going to be a collision.
 
The only problem I have here is we cant just use the phrase duty of care for one situation and not others.
Why wasnt the decoy runner looking? He should be aware of the hole he is running into and not only did he not make it through he hit Crossland up high running at pace. Crossland turns into him which to me shows that the player was never going to make it though. I think it looked worse the more I watched it and in my opinion action should have been taken against Melbourne. There was absolutely no duty of care from the decpy runner and he got away with it.
 
If it was a try scoring play, the try would have been disallowed for obstruction cause the decoy runner has to go through the line and not obstruct /contact the defender. The onus is on the decoy runner, not the defender

So we should have got a penalty regardless of Crossland getting injured, let alone the high contact shoulder to his head, as they took advantage of the obstruction
 
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