All due respect to Matty John's. But he's never been in charge of a clubs salary cap or anything more complex than playing and offering his limited wisdom to young halves. So he's talking out of his ass. The rebuild we're going through isn't only a roster rebuilding process either. We are having to get our junior development system back on track as well as our coaching and recruitment staff needing to be improved.
I've seen many players promoted who still have massive fundamental flaws in their game. Unfortunately buying in a big name player or two would just be a short term solution. Dib and co tried the short term solutions with little success.
As fans we're not patient, but if we rely on short term solutions we'll be back to needing to rebuild again sooner than later. Even the Roosters had limited success back when they relied on recruiting stars alone. Once they started getting their junior development in order alongside recruitment of marquee players they actually had options available when stars got injuries.
As much as I want to be supporting this team while they're premiership contenders, I recognise that the NRL squad wasn't the only area where we were suffering under the previous administration. It wasn't a matter of luck that we had a hoard of great talent that emerged from our junior base to take us to our last premiership. It was good management of the club at every level.
I think our current board know that and they're working towards getting the whole system back to a point where recruiting stars isn't the only solution. Most clubs at present are forced to pay pretty high prices for a medium level of talent. The strongest clubs produce the occasional marquee player but keep their cap balanced by also getting a few seasons of value out of the medium players they bring through. We're still in a hangover phase from an admin team that reputedly had players like Brad Abbey and Lloyd Perrett on 300k a season contracts before they'd even played in the NRL.
So if it takes 2 more years of adjustment to get good players coming through without the fundamental flaws that we see in many of our promoted juniors it's well worth the pain of not being in premiership contention. I'm here for the long haul and I really hope that the voting members give our current board the chance to re-establish the right systems and staff needed to have a production line that allows us to keep the key players and gun juniors long term. That's the blueprint for NRL greatness. But it will take time.
