2023 Recruitment & Retention Thread

krustykraz said:
I imagine not wanting to play under O'Brien would have been a factor.
Pongas contract is going to effect recruitment for the next 5 years. The highest paid player in the game, who's not in the top 5 in his position.
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Going straight into a Ponga attack is below the belt. He's played 40mins there, give him a chance. Give him a chance to recover from a year of serious head knocks that knocked his confidence. In that 40mins he tackled his heart out and put on a nice try.

If we paid Dom what he was asking for, THAT would have affected our ability to keep young talent. We would have been stuck with a strong winger, but lost a future FB and Centre in Feruson and Sharpe due to them been thrown ridiculous money.

It's on the whole team to start performing week in week out. Noit just one guy.
 
BTP said:
Going straight into a Ponga attack is below the belt. He's played 40mins there, give him a chance. Give him a chance to recover from a year of serious head knocks that knocked his confidence. In that 40mins he tackled his heart out and put on a nice try.

If we paid Dom what he was asking for, THAT would have affected our ability to keep young talent. We would have been stuck with a strong winger, but lost a future FB and Centre in Feruson and Sharpe due to them been thrown ridiculous money.

It's on the whole team to start performing week in week out. Noit just one guy.
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Wasnt an attack, just stating facts. Even when he signed the contract he wasn't in the top 5 fullbacks in the comp.

It's just frustrating because we pay Ponga on potential but Dom is actually one of the top 5 wingers and we are not prepared to pay him $500+.
 
krustykraz said:
Wasnt an attack, just stating facts. Even when he signed the contract he wasn't in the top 5 fullbacks in the comp.
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True. Was based off his sheer talent that we saw in first couple years. He hasn't been his best no, but that hasn't been through a want, he's clearly suffered from injuries and the head knocks in past 2 years. Think he had some trauma from it all, thus why he didn't run it back as much.

Sure we could use his money to go after an established half and FB... But there isn't many coming through or available. I'm still excited to see where we can go with him and back the club to get best out of him. Hastings was a good start. Keeping the top sqaud on the park would be another.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
I don’t want to post anything in here which might get the forum in trouble Oliver, but if the rumour I’ve heard about Gus Crichton is true, he might be out of the game for a very, very long time. May never come back.
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I'm not going to say it either publicly but I heard a rumour last week about it and he's going to be out for a long time like you said.
 
Why is everyone shocked that he is going, you could tell in his quotes he was good as gone.

Anyway fark him, shows the type of person he is...

Makes me laugh though how anyone can think roosters are under the cap, there was an article yesterday saying they will struggle retain Suaali and now they sign young. Biggest pack of cheats with politis and his brown bags.
 
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krustykraz said:
It's just frustrating because we pay Ponga on potential but Dom is actually one of the top 5 wingers and we are not prepared to pay him $500+.
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Personally I think Dom has this potential, but he’s not there yet. There’s a lot of good wingers running around. To’o, Addo-Carr, Mulitalo, Tualagi, Oates, Suaalii, are all better as of now, and that’s just off the top of my head.
 
At first I thought Dom would stay with the two English players joining next year but the longer this dragged out I knew he would join either the Roosters or Rabbitohs.

Bloody annoying though he's leaving after having a breakthrough year last year. Just hope he least performs for us this year before he buggers off.
 
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People must be stuck in thinking about the Salary Cap as it was 10 years ago, even though the CBA negotiations are ongoing the initial increase that was announced by the NRL was a cap of over $12 Million for your top 30.

So if we take that $12 Mil as the roundabout figure then you've got 500k for Dom sitting at about 1/24th of your cap, if you don't think it's worth paying Dom 1/24th of our cap because he's a winger then I think you have a long think about his contributions to our team last year and reconsider.

I'm absolutely gutted, I don't blame Dom at all - if we're not in the ballpark for 500k then we deserve everything we get. We'd finally latched on to a new wave of recruitment tactics early by headhunting youngsters from England and immediately produced a absolute gem, with hopefully either Pryce and KPP to make a similar impact. Now it appears the Roosters are on the same train as us and I'm sure more clubs will follow, they've obviously now got Dom but they also recently signed another young English winger who burst into SL last season as well - Lewis Murphy.
 
If Dom is on $120k per year why not up this year to say $320k, pay that next year or more and he is getting the equivalent of $520k for 2023, surely other clubs couldn’t top that and he/we can then reconsider 2024 onwards.
 
Oliver said:
How reliable is Toohey these day though?
Is he only saying we offered Dom unders to protect AOB?
Maybe our offer was more than the Roosters but Dom still wanted to leave just like Watson.
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Toohey is on the money with most things... Watson is the only one he's got wrong in a long time. And that took everyone by surprise, even his best mates.
 
Dom’s comments over weekend about how he was blown away be the professionalism of the English coaches and teammates had me worried that he would be drawn to roosters because of that point. Plus they’re a successful club.
But then to hear our cap is in such a terrible state that we could not offer him $500k when he is the best prospect the club has had in years. Whoever let the clauses pass through so Ponga could be games biggest earner should be shot into the sun.
I’m sure someone will put up a post like every year talking up the talented junior’s coming through, not to worry, but unfortunately they never make the cut.
Was dogs fan until 88 and been rusted on knights since. Every year I get more negative and jaded with this mob.
Rant over.
 
jamesgould said:
I don’t know why we didn’t just pay him tbh, he’s like our only decent player …

The club will never get anywhere while this nonsense goes on, we finally unearth a decent talent and he’s gone immediately. 😔
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the "just pay him" attitude is what lead to our woes from the bennett years through the brown years. we should be appluading the club for saying we think your worth X amount its the best we can do.
 
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