there is no one to blame for the problems surrounding the Dogs salary cap then the club and its management... agents are there to get their players the best deal they can... players are in the game for a short period and if they want to maximise their earnings to prepare for life after football (as they should), good luck to them... clubs have no compunction getting rid of underperforming players or players at the tail end of their careers when they are no longer what they once were... the club will live and die on the field by the manner in which it manages its cap and we are f*%#ing dying out there from a thousand cuts
no doubt, managing a club's salary cap is not easy and it is not helped by a league that could not advise the clubs in a timely fashion what the actual cap limit is for the year in question... but there are plenty of tough jobs in this world and if you are not competent enough to do them, step aside and let someone else who can
i would not have thought the club could have allowed themselves to descend into such a salary cap mess and mire... multiple players on back-ended deals, multiple players playing for other clubs against us still earning money from us from badly negotiated deals while with us, multiple players on ratcheted deals which increase percentage wise with any increase in the cap... moronic... what is more, they have allowed the juniors to fall away from what was once a pre-eminent place the club occupied which means we do not have relatively cheap up and comers to slot into the team to offset the salary cap mess
Des Hasler is clearly a great coach... he is meticulous and can prepare a FG team to its limit to achieve the best results possible... but if we look at the Sea Eagles and Bulldogs as clubs (ie. more than just the 17 players that run outeach week) once Hasler moved on, it is clear that he also has no clue what makes a club great beyond simply preparing the FG squad --> he has no regard for junior development... he has no financial sense when it comes to salary cap management and moreover, does not appreciate that fact enough to allow others who do to manage the cap... he has no eye for external talent to recruit (eg. Williams recruited and persisted with whilst the club let go of the likes of Pritchard, Taupau, Finucane etc.)