Hmmm. See where you're coming from and agree to a point.
Again looking from the outside the positions we really need to strengthen are hooker, half, and centre. Looking at those 3 positions:
- No good halves on the market on the market and 350,000 is nothing from Foran. Can't call that poor.
- Centre we missed out on Mitchell (always going to Souths). Who else? Scott? (off-field issues) Ramien (always going to Sharks)? Others? Would've been great to have had those players but honestly think none were ever going to come to us so why waste more time trying to get them to come.
- Hooker I do think we dropped the ball on that one. Api did a 11th hour turn around and he went to Penrith. Yes, we don't want a player who doesn't want to be here but ... Plus he was maybe the 3-4th attempt at getting a hooker so I think this was poor from our recruitment side of things.
Missing out on Addo-Carr is a bummer as I would've loved him with us without a doubt! Not going to hide that. But was that poor recruiting? Winger isn't a key position so any player recruited in that position is a luxury in many ways so you don't want to spend too much over on him ... especially when his heart seems to be elsewhere ... ?
Let's not forget that recruitment also involved retaining players which is what we did pretty well this year, no?
Was recruitment good? I wouldn't say it's great as we're missing a back without doubt. But at the same time we haven't splashed money just for the sake of it, kept our best players. I'd say it's an average to good recruitment window though you can't judge now. Wouldn't say it's poor though.
Just my thoughts.