Chris Houston signs with the Widnes Vikings

Stone was laughably bad as if Uate shouldn't have been dropped for Ross, Tapine for Houston, BJL for anyone, Faaologo for Maotora, Roberts for Carlos. List goes on. Every ones best mate should have been a councilor he was that concerned with peoples feelings.

Even Ndaira for Clysdale.

Sione's mismanagement were lucky the kid didn't retire!
 
Yeah the plan is probably to gather money together & wait for big names to get forced out as has been said. I'd be quite surprised if they had anyone big in mind at the moment. But I do reckon they're probably still on the search for cheap options, 2 weeks ago I was reading an article about England forward Brett Ferres saying he had a couple of offers from the NRL he knocked back, one in Sydney & one outside of Sydney. Would not be surprised at all if it was us & Defender makes a good point about Houston, how we could have waited till 2017 to use his money, but have instead tried to free it up now.
 
I think you're right josh, there's nobody on the market now and if there was I'd assume we'll be the first to give them a decent offer. As much as we have freed up cash and only signed young inexperienced players,m there's not a lot more we can do until someone gets pushed out. Probably the Souths for burgess return
 
Junior11 said:
The amount of money we've freed up is ridiculous. I don't buy into the upgrades taking it all up talk, there's no way. Hodkinson was apparently a lot cheaper than expected too. We're not just talking Gidley, McManus, Roberts, Scott, Clydsdale, Houston, Leilua etc but we also no longer pay Boyd's huge contract, we saved 300k with Packer, we lost Cuthbo and literally another 20+ NSW Cup/NRL players. I know we got Tariq and Hodkinson and a few cheaper guys like Paea and Stockwell and I know we have given decent upgrades to Sione and Gagai (I really doubt guys like Sims and Mamo got much more than what they were already on), also we have brought in plenty of young guys who would be cheap... I just don't see how we haven't got something big planned.
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Exactly. I said from day dot that the whole "we haven't got a whole lot of cap space left" was a load of crap. Nothing added up and surely, SURELY, we wouldn't have upgraded contracts so high, now that's crazy. Here's hoping Brown has a few tricks up his sleeve.
 
Looks like Manly are trying to offload? 1 they're looking at getting rid of is Brenton Lawrence. Wouldn't complain if we got him tbh
 
If we are saving money it's for a big signing, which makes sense.
Signing young guys who Brown thinks are better than the money they are on makes sense.
Spending money on mediocre fringe players that other clubs don't want anymore makes no sense.
 
Is Lawrence better than what we already have though? Either sign up young talented players for cheap or sign someone who's actually significantly better than what we already have.
 
He would massively improve our depth and competition in FRF IMO.
There isn't much off contract this year so IMO we should be after 1 more prop and a Hooker this year with Lawrence and Roby filling that nicely imo
Next year is the year there is some big names coming off. So hopefully we can sign one big name then!
 
He also said we had no money this season. Then that changed to us having a bit of room to move in the cap. So don't believe a word of it
 
Brenton Lawrence, really? With the exception of Jez Smith, we have almost gotten rid of all the old 30+ forwards & you want to spend what limited cap space we have available on a bloke coming off a major back injury that will be turning 32 next year. I'd rather a front rower who's coming into their prime more or actually spend the money on a centre like Dylan Walker
 
josh2010 said:
He also said we had no money this season. Then that changed to us having a bit of room to move in the cap. So don't believe a word of it
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Did you read the article?

He confirmed we had around $350k for 2016. You can add to that whatever we save by punting Houston. Roby would want all of that plus more to come from England. We probably need 2 or 3 more first graders so Brown is stuck looking at the Lawrence's of the comp.

Here's a fun game.

Let's say Mullen, Snowden and J Smith are injured, Gagai and Hodkinson are away on Origin duty.
What is our 17 at the moment?
Not really an unlikely scenario (seeing as we had Mullen/Stockwell/Rochow missing for most of last year).
 
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Nah didn't read. Does that include McManus contract? I'd assume Roby if he comes would be on a back ended contract
 
slotmachine said:
Did you read the article?

He confirmed we had around $350k for 2016. You can add to that whatever we save by punting Houston. Roby would want all of that plus more to come from England. We probably need 2 or 3 more first graders so Brown is stuck looking at the Lawrence's of the comp.
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the article was also before Clydesdale went to the raiders & Lowrie retired so there should be more than what he said at that time.
 
Yeah we'd have a slow gathering up of money getting rid of all these plodders & I'm fairly sure Brown mentioned salary cap pressure at other clubs only just a week ago, so I'd say that's what we're aiming for rather than using it on cheapies. I read Lawrence was offered to a club in need of a front rower & they politely declined, could have been us.
 
He was discussed before, but was reported on the SBB this morning that Dylan Walker has officialy been asked to look around. Just goes to show; other clubs are prepared to let big name players go, if the circumstances are right. We might not be looking at him, but who ever is may be looking to free up cap space buy letting one of their bigger name players go?? The player market these days is just one big mary-go-round! You never know who will pop up on the market, or who's being shopped around without it being made public yet.

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I stil have no doubt we're off loading the likes of Houston and Clydesdale with a plan in mind. It has to be for 2016, otherwise why not keep them on the books till their contracts run out next year anyway?
 
Walker fronted the Board early in the week for 'open discussions' on the prescription drug problem that landed him in hospital. Of course Sam coming back would have influenced their decision.

And Houston being asked to move on may not free up much money this year as I don't think there will be big money thrown at him here or SL.
 
sau said:
I doubt it's sione mate, the other two possibly but I think Mullen has been told to improve also he didn't look very happy in his interview
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Maybe he has been told that there are a couple of young guys coming through that are pushing for his spot , that would be new to him as no one has done that in his entire career.
 
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