Cheers
@The Faz
There was an article today about the top 50 players in the NRL.
Souths have 8 (4 spine players)
Roosters 8 (2 spine)
Panthers 7 (3 spine)
Storm 10 (4 spine)
Raiders 4 (2 spine)
Bulldogs ZERO
Some on here act like we're raiding their personal piggy bank and don't want to spend decent money on "anyone" (including spine players like Brandon Smith, Adam Reynolds, Latrell Mitchell etc) and they seem to believe we're going to magically become a top 4 side on the cheap by promoting some of our juniors like Schoupp etc when they probably haven't even watched these young blokes play a full game. Are our recruiters of junior players the best in the business, better than all other 15 recruitment teams ? I seriously doubt we have the best juniors capable of making us a top 4 team. Others complain we shouldn't spend decent money chasing players because we'll have to upgrade our young halves when they start playing well - like it's a GIVEN.
If we want to be definite (not maybe) top 4 any time soon we need to get rid of the dead wood and replace them with proven quality players as in stars not guys like Stimson and Britt who can't even make our 17 - what a f..king waste of money that was when we could have paid a little more and had a great hooker.
If we can get a gamebreaker or 3 we're lucky if we can grab them. If we can't afford to buy 2 - 3 established superstars even better than Cotric something is seriously wrong when you look at us on paper compared to the rosters of the teams above.
Unless we can jag B.Smith I think we need to settle for Deitz and sign the best "attacking" back to replace Hopa and the best attacking forward to replace Napa. Some on here whinge about needing another prop but like who'se available before 2023 ? (besides Aaron Woods so basically no-one)
We should definitely have the cap to buy Staggs and Ryan Matterson for 2022 and push up RFM to middles if really needed then target James Fisher-Harris for 2023. I'm quietly confident though that Thompson, Hetherington, Atoni and Ogden will more than hold their own this year and in future.
Unless we're buying someone like Adam Reynolds (and the usual suspects would bag that idea too) then we have our halves and fullback settled for the next few years and possibly our hooker too. Why not spend the money we saved on our spine to strengthen our weakest links in other areas ? Half of the top 50 players aren't in the spine but are still gamebreakers. We need as many genuine gamebreakers as we can get no matter what position they play.