REBUILD?

[dogwhisperer]

I’ll probably get eaten up by many on here but I don’t mind. Yes we have problems in the backs but our main problem is in the forwards. I don’t think we have much grunt up front and it’s the main reason why we’re losing games, especially games against weaker sides. The only forwards I’d keep is Napa, Ogden, Jackson and CHN. We need good quality robust forwards to dominate in the middle to give any chance for our backs to score any points. In the backs id be looking for only two centers. I’d be persisting with Meaney, Okunbor and Smith as our back three, then for 2021 I’d go after a marquee half. The problem is our forwards first before anything. Martin Meh, Tolman Meh, C.Smith meh, Sue Meh, RFM maybe, Elliot Meh. The problem is our forwards first and foremost.

 

[bullanth]

If we gave our 9, 7, 6 and 1 to the Storm......they’d be coming last right now, that’s just a fact

I’m not happy with everything Dean has done but seriously this side are not contenders, fact

I think the Andersons can fix the joint but they need time, all of us on here including me are impatient, we want results now but realistically look at the side, some of these guys may go on to be great players, some definitely need to be moved on.

I hope we start winning next year ffs

It's coming up to 2 years,for this board and they've done jack shit,over the last 2 years we have released close to $7 million of our salary cap and replaced them with what young guys on a quarter of the money,I'm really starting to think that they are diverting from the real issues,and are incapable of sorting the problems.

 

[Bluebody]

I read it when we released mbye somewhere and also on a fox show, Hughes came out and said there’s some relief and we have money in the cap.

Also when they interviewed pay on another fox show he came out and Said we have money in the cap spare this year but we ain’t spending it. How the hell does that make any sense to anyone?

You would front load existing contacts to remove the pressure from back loaded ones if you had free cap space! If there was no key talent, they may have opted for that strategy.

 

[Mr Invisible]

I’ll probably get eaten up by many on here but I don’t mind

What do you taste like? Just wondering that's all!

 

[Dogtime]

It was the interview on Fox when they asked him the situation etc. I wish I can find it but he said we have a bit of free cap space and they are looking for a marquee signing next year. He said we have some this year but havnt spent it. I brought it up in a different thread the night it was on tv.

But yea I see what your saying about our players staying till 2020. I just think RE signing pay so early on was a stupid mistake and not giving dymock a crack was even worse. Pays tactics during the games and his selections are by far the worst I’ve seen as a dogs supporter

At the risk of sounding repetitive, YES we do have cap space, close to $1M this season when the season began. The trouble was that there just wasnt the kind of player available at the end of last season that was off contract that we wanted. My thought is that the Club has since committed part of this space to front ending some contracts from 2020 to effectively transfer the unused cap space to next season, when hopefully someone we want becomes available.

The Club wanted to see how far we could go this year with the available squad. Lets not forget that there were a few unknowns about this season, considering how well we were playing at end of last season. We also had Foran back and Napa exchanged for Klemmer, sp there was a genuine upbeat feeling amongst the playing squad. We had worked hard on developing attacking structures, faster ball movement, fitness and combinations in the pre season.

With due respect, Haslers tactics were far worse than Pays. We were ugly to watch the last few seasons under Hasler such that Andrew Johns and Fittler couldnt even bring themselves to comment how diabolical we had become under Hasler. Pay then breathed new life into us and in the back end of last season we had some great wins over St G, Broncos and Warriors - all top 8 teams, playing some great attacking football.

We dont want to spend our cap buying duds like Mbye or Woods again. We are still looking for a marque player but basically theres not much around THAT WOULD FIT INTO OUR CULTURE.

 

[Alan79]

The other thing the club spoke about was that they're not going to pay overs for talent like the club has in recent years. Hopefully it avoids situations where we have guys like Williams eating up huge chunks of the cap and doing SFA to justify the investment. That probably means that we will have to wait until a decent list of players in one position are available to chase in that position. Last year a lot of second rowers were available and we picked up CHN. I don't monitor the list of off contract players. But I don't think good outside backs were plentiful at this stage.

I know that plenty of people here just want to whinge regardless of whether the club is making smart decisions. So it's getting tiresome taking the time to point out that few options were available to make huge moves in the player market.

 

[Tassie Devil]

The way I see it. The first thing that the board had to do was become cap compliant. At that time the only way to do so was to release players. Part of the issue they faced was that it was really late in the season and most clubs had used up their salary cap space. So unfortunately I think we had to pay more wages than we'd have liked to move players on. Our signings before we moved on everyone that we did had to be very astute purchases. I think Meaney and Cogger fit the bill in this regard. Chrighton hasn't impressed me yet but he was also a budget buy before we cleared space. I think CHN was our next recruit and should prove to be a good player for us. Sue was a gamble. He still might play his best football for us, but he's far from a polished player.

The main issues we had were
1. We had a limited budget as did other clubs.
2. Most off contract players were not re-signed because they weren't priorities for the clubs they were at.
3. Our production line wasn't in a healthy state, thus we weren't able to promote much quality from within.
4. A number of our off contract players were aging and at a stage where injury concerns could be exacerbated by their age, so the Morris twins for example were a big money gamble.

So our roster quality wasn't going to improve based on both limited budget and the fact that most players with potential were locked up already. The board could either make the choice of short term pain (let our best two backline stars go and hope that the youngsters we promoted to replace them stepped up) Or give the Morris twins longer term contracts which might have blocked the paths of any youngsters that might have become available or improved through the off season.

They opted for the short term pain. We will be able to sign quality sooner because they made that decision. But we're suffering on field this year with an understrength backline. There was no way to sign established quality in the spine on a budget. That really covers the NRL squad.

That leaves the aspects of the rebuild that happens behind the scenes. I touched on the poor position of our production line. And as far as I can see this is the area the new board was able to focus on. We've expanded our junior recruitment prospects by sponsoring a couple of large regional competitions and seem to be clearing the way to improve the coaching and recruitment staff in the lower grades. Because it's quite clear that the youngsters we've promoted aren't quite up to scratch in every position. Ogden has been good for a debutante. But someone like Okunbor has major issues that should have been ironed out during his development.

The approach the board has taken is a long term plan that will give us sustainability in our roster moving forward. Unfortunately in the short term we as fans might not be impressed with our results on game day.

As far as Pays coaching goes. He was not the coach I would have chased. An experienced coach might have been a better bet to combat the inexperience of our roster. But the old board picked him due to the vocal fans screaming loudly that we needed to inject Bulldogs DNA into the position. However in Pays defence, a gameplan can easily go awry if those having to implement it on the field get flustered. Biased refereeing against us hasn't helped at all. And I'm not excusing Pay or the team. But realistically there are rosters packed with talent coached by highly touted coaches who aren't in a much better position in terms of results at this stage.

So to my way of thinking we just have to ride out the year and hope that head office makes some intelligent signings. It's going to take time to bring in talent from 1-17, but hopefully by next year we have a few extra players round that can improve our performance.

It's not fun to watch right now. But we're heading back to the formula that we followed in our golden eras. We need our junior quality to be better when they debut just as much as we need to recruit quality in the short term. There aren't any easy solutions right now. So screaming about things might offer stress relief, but it won't speed up the rebuild.

Spot on this. Have to agree with most of it. Do think we're holding out for a better coach after it's become apparent that Pay really isn't up to the task. Imagine it's also why they're holding off on making big name signings. Well written my friend.

 

[Mr Shhh]

If you have a spare $500k to spend this year and it’s not used it doesn’t accumulate a give you extra next year. If more cap space is coming in 2020 we could still sign the player they are supposedly after in that year.
How about signing someone like Segearo for 2019 only, that could have helped

He’s just been busted for drink driving apparently. Talented player with way too many off field issues.

 

[dogwhisperer]

What do you taste like? Just wondering that's all!

I taste like a 6 foot 3 inches, 105kg Lebo

 

[Dogzof95]

The other thing the club spoke about was that they're not going to pay overs for talent like the club has in recent years. Hopefully it avoids situations where we have guys like Williams eating up huge chunks of the cap and doing SFA to justify the investment. That probably means that we will have to wait until a decent list of players in one position are available to chase in that position. Last year a lot of second rowers were available and we picked up CHN. I don't monitor the list of off contract players. But I don't think good outside backs were plentiful at this stage.

I know that plenty of people here just want to whinge regardless of whether the club is making smart decisions. So it's getting tiresome taking the time to point out that few options were available to make huge moves in the player market.

With all due respect to the board and what they're trying to achieve with what they have, the biggest concern and challenge facing our once mighty club is how will they attract talented players, because at the moment we can't compete with any of the top clubs if not all clubs! This is the reality we are facing, unless a relocation is on the cards??

 

[GDR]

With all due respect to the board and what they're trying to achieve with what they have, the biggest concern and challenge facing our once mighty club is how will they attract talented players, because at the moment we can't compete with any of the top clubs if not all clubs! This is the reality we are facing, unless a relocation is on the cards??

easy you do exactly what the Newcastle knights did.. you pick a few players from a team that would be considered bottom shelf i.e Guerra and SKD.. then those guys tell their mates how great theclub treats them and how awesome it is and then you get a few more i.e Peirce, Watson and Klemmer .. picking a player to create a network .. id be very surpirsed if we dont at least get someone from the panthers in teh off season, through the CHN and crighton connection

 

[Dogzof95]

easy you do exactly what the Newcastle knights did.. you pick a few players from a team that would be considered bottom shelf i.e Guerra and SKD.. then those guys tell their mates how great theclub treats them and how awesome it is and then you get a few more i.e Peirce, Watson and Klemmer ..

The other thing Newcastle did was pay overs for players to bring them in, with the help of the NRL, who helped them get out of the mess they were in!

 

[Heckler]

I taste like a 6 foot 3 inches, 105kg Lebo

So I'm guessing you taste like garlic?[emoji23]

 

[B-Train]

It didn't help that they spent a fair chunk of our free cap space on Napa, who at 3 years and 550k or so, looks like a poor signing considering our situation. Napa has played two good games all season and not justified that contract despite him somehow making Origin even though he's been completely out of form. Ogden at a fraction of the price has been just as good if not better...

That money could have been crucial in signing the young playmakers and backs we need that could truly turn the club around.

Instead, the club probably has limited funds again because they spent it unwisely. Add to that, no one wants to join us when we have a clueless coach, play a negative style of footy and are coming last. Especially when we probably can't even pay overs to the right targets because of the lack of cap space from the Napa signing.

 

[Dogzof95]

It didn't help that they spent a fair chunk of our free cap space on Napa, who at 3 years and 550k or so, looks like a poor signing considering our situation. Napa has played two good games all season and not justified that contract despite him somehow making Origin even though he's been completely out of form. Ogden at a fraction of the price has been just as good if not better...

That money could have been crucial in signing the young playmakers and backs we need that could truly turn the club around.

Instead, the club probably has limited funds again because they spent it unwisely. Add to that, no one wants to join us when we have a clueless coach, play a negative style of footy and are coming last. Especially when we probably can't even pay overs to the right targets because of the lack of cap space from the Napa signing.

When we had Hasler as coach, Cronk was mentioned as he could be joining us, even though we knew it was never going to happen but we were part of that conversation..... I can't see us been part of any conversion regarding any marquee players any more. The board needs to wake up, otherwise our situation is going to become uglier than what it is.

 

[Spoonman84]

When we had Hasler as coach, Cronk was mentioned as he could be joining us, even though we knew it was never going to happen but we were part of that conversation..... I can't see us been part of any conversion regarding any marquee players any more. The board needs to wake up, otherwise our situation is going to become uglier than what it is.

What’s being part of the conversation matter when they never signed anyway? Most of the time “the conversation” is sparked by player managers and the club isn’t even interested.

 

[GDR]

When we had Hasler as coach, Cronk was mentioned as he could be joining us, even though we knew it was never going to happen but we were part of that conversation..... I can't see us been part of any conversion regarding any marquee players any more. The board needs to wake up, otherwise our situation is going to become uglier than what it is.

all that proves is that player managers were using dib and co to drive up the price of their clients and still signing elsewhere

 

[Dogzof95]

What’s being part of the conversation matter when they never signed anyway? Most of the time “the conversation” is sparked by player managers and the club isn’t even interested.

I agree, what I'm trying to say is we were at least getting a mention, now we only get mentioned when there are fringe players available.

 

[Dogzof95]

all that proves is that player managers were using dib and co to drive up the price of their clients and still signing elsewhere

That won't work any more, player agents will be using other clubs.

 

[Spoonman84]

I agree, what I'm trying to say is we were at least getting a mention, now we only get mentioned when there are fringe players available.

We only have money for fringe players it’s hard for the managers to say they got a deal for a marquee player from the Bulldogs when everyone knows we don’t have that money.