I have to admit despite them being salary cap cheats, the Storm have the best recruitment in the Business. They sign guys like Koribete, Finucane and finds gems like Vunivalu, Asofa Solomona,etc. They're probably on the lookout for the next superstar who will take over Smith and Cronk. I thought it was the end of them when Slater picked up his injuries and I predicted that they would miss the 8 but they have guys like Cameron Munster who step up. Meanwhile.......at Belmore, We are still looking for a Fullback after 4 years.
I wish I could like your post again Haha. We have completely failed as a footy club. As a business we may be going ahead with memberships and turnoverand our public image has grown (mind you reports are we blew our football budget this year and posted a loss so even our front of house are fucking up it seems).
But how any club can lose a key position like fullback and say our next one will be a rockstar (implying they will be as good if not better) and we end up with 3 wingers filling in for the next 3 seasons is a massive fail. You wouldn't expect it from the knights or dragons. Yet we are guilty of it. It is similar to Man U or Barca loosing a midfielder and playing a goal keeper for 3 seasons (ok slight exaggeration there
). There would be riots on the streets.
Storm have always had top recruitment. Then and broncos would be the best at identifying young talent and getting them into their system. I have never heard of a storm player being "home sick" slater, Cronk and smith lived their most of their lives after coming down from Queensland. Yet we lost 2 players in 3 season to this bullshit excuse (which was actually about money then anything else).
And ok storm and broncos are the top for recruitment of juniors and even top line players (broncos chasing radradra after picking up Roberts and mead, that's more quality signing in 12 months then we have had in 12 years). But even the roosters, Penrith, parra, dragons, warriors, raiders, sharks (I can almost run through all other teams here) have squads that have been developed and improved year to year. They have kids coming through with potential or brought kids into the club and built them up.
Apart from playing first grade money for a kid that was 2 years away from first grade (abbey) we haven't targeted the next big thing for a while (definitely not since Hasler and castles have been pulling the reins).