DONT STRESS ABOUT THE CAP. Here's why...

[Horse]

 

[FaceBreaker]

Give it up and face the facts mate, we are fucked.

The sooner you come to terms with this, the better it will be.

 

[coach]

Point 1 - this isn't the case about our junior development system anymore.
Point 2 - Klemmer and Woods won't be SOO reps anymore and Jackson could miss out too - so now we have none.
Point 3 - Dropping Lichaa and putting Frawley in last week shows no stability in our spine. I wouldn't even trust Foran to be around for another season as he looks made of glass.
Point 4 - I disagree. Absolutely no depth. The standard Montoya has been dishing out this year, if we had depth he would be hooked by now.

If not injured klemmer will 110% be there for the blues

 

[coach]

So much shit info in this thread from numerous posts
What's a shitty thread lol

 

[Indiandog]

and the band plays on while the titanic sinks to the bottom of the ocean...........

 

[dogg4life]

Not to sound racist but you have to look at the demographics in those areas too. Around the Canterbury area there aren’t too many islanders and aussies who would make up 95% of the first grade talent pool. Most of the area is middle eastern where there is a preference for soccer.

 

[dogsballs]

I really can’t see how Jackson dosn’t get picked for origin, wasn’t he the nsw player of the series last year? He’s hardly been in bad form the last few weeks either. He’s proven at origin level.

 

[Malla]

I really can’t see how Jackson dosn’t get picked for origin, wasn’t he the nsw player of the series last year? He’s hardly been in bad form the last few weeks either. He’s proven at origin level.

Cordner, Frizzell, Graham and Trobjevic are ahead of him - plus Freddy might blood De Bellin and who knows who Gould will be in his ear about. Who knows. Either way, I would prefer Jackson not play origin. Seems like origin period might be our best chance to get some wins on the board lol

 

[CMP]

Cordner, Frizzell, Graham and Trobjevic are ahead of him - plus Freddy might blood De Bellin and who knows who Gould will be in his ear about. Who knows. Either way, I would prefer Jackson not play origin. Seems like origin period might be our best chance to get some wins on the board lol

I cannot see Jackson being any chance.

If he wasn’t the incumbent captain. I don’t think Cordner on form would be picked either.

The way Freddy was talking the other day the Dragons will basically fill the pack.

This was the 10 players indicated to fill the pack & bench without saying who was playing where.

Klemmer
McInness
Vaughan
Gillard
Cordner
Frizell
Sims
De Belin
Trbojevic
Cook/Peachy

 

[Berries]

Posts and people like this at exactly why this club is where it is. You have had your head buried in the sand the last five years, the amount of Bulldogs fans I met from 2013 to 2017 who at the the start of the year said "we will go close this year" absolutely delusional. We are fucked and the quicker we realize it the closer we will be to fixing it

 

[Mr Invisible]

some of that may be true in terms of weekend footballers but the bulk of juniors get recruited to NRL teams from all over the country. We have Keebra Park as a supply line for one and they are a league producing factory. McDonnell is heading out to all the school carnivals shortly to recruit more 16-17 year olds to come down for Ball/Flegg etc. We'll pick up a number of those kids to fill next years juniors from the carnival and add to that the tryouts at the beginning of the year where a couple of hundred young kids will come down to BSG to try out for the Matts/Ball sides. It really doesn't matter where they play their under age footy anymore.

I know that, but we get the leftovers from Keebra Park after Broncos have decided who they want. Pretty sure Tigers are still involved with them too, so we are battling them for the leftovers.

 

[D- voice]

Not even close Dragons, Parra, Newcastle, Storm, Raiders, Broncos and Cronulla all have better junior development. The juniors are recovering from 5 years of neglect. Having NRL standard players in the pipeline is what we need and we are still a few years away from having a production line again. We are heading in the right direction again but we are far from having one of the best junior development systems.

We used to until Hitler Hasler & Criminal Cleal destroyed it

 

[jamma01]

I know that, but we get the leftovers from Keebra Park after Broncos have decided who they want. Pretty sure Tigers are still involved with them too, so we are battling them for the leftovers.

Not the case this year , Keebra three best players are Winters Chang , Seumanutafa and Karitiana all contracted to us

 

[Blueandwhiteblood1968]

Full credit for the positive write up but I for one am praying we have no option but to release Tolman, Woods etc early.

Who would want Woods in their team?

 

[Mitch Connor]

Not the case this year , Keebra three best players are Winters Chang , Seumanutafa and Karitiana all contracted to us

It’s a shame that we missed Haas, Fotuaika, Fifita and Mikaele by 2 years.

 

[SweetFA]

some of that may be true in terms of weekend footballers but the bulk of juniors get recruited to NRL teams from all over the country. We have Keebra Park as a supply line for one and they are a league producing factory. McDonnell is heading out to all the school carnivals shortly to recruit more 16-17 year olds to come down for Ball/Flegg etc. We'll pick up a number of those kids to fill next years juniors from the carnival and add to that the tryouts at the beginning of the year where a couple of hundred young kids will come down to BSG to try out for the Matts/Ball sides. It really doesn't matter where they play their under age footy anymore.

The Broncos still have first dibs(no pun intended )from Keebra Park, W McDonnell is doing a solid job there though as well as setting up an arrangement with both Fairfield Patrician Brothers & Cabramatta RLC re -sourcing some great junior talent from Parramatta- we’ll see the fruits in the next season

 

[berries1935]

We need to try and gain some respect this year and i believe with our run home we can do that. the real rebuild starts next year with the Morris boys gone, Eastwood gone and hopefully we can offload Tolman, Lichea & Montoya. @JMCentral is right in that we are in a better position then the knights as we have rep players already. The doom gloom from some people here is shocking some times, as we need to back the club to develop guys Toomaga, Mariner, Martin and Olive. We could still surprise some people this year and next.

 

[Oatley Dog]

The Broncos still have first dibs(no pun intended )from Keebra Park, W McDonnell is doing a solid job there though as well as setting up an arrangement with both Fairfield Patrician Brothers & Cabramatta RLC re -sourcing some great junior talent from Parramatta- we’ll see the fruits in the next season

Yep. I'm confident we are tracking in the right direction. I'm hoping to visit the Bulldogs CofE in a couple of weeks to go through it. Should be interesting.

 

[Dunny]

lets be honest, we need to take a good look at clubs like penrith and newcastle.

we need to have a full make over of our squad and not let fellings get in the way.

my opinion is we should strip most of the playing group and keep a handful of our key players then re build around them.
I know people want to bring through our juniors but are they actually upto 1st grade standards.

as hard as it is to say id like to see the likes of:

eastwood
tolman
hopoate
Elliott
morris boys
frawley
lichaa

all shown the door and then sniff around other clubs picking up young mid range fringe first graders like.

HOK-zach dockar clay ( who i think is a gun )
Wing- gideon mosby
CTW- taanee milne
CTW- javid bowen
id also love to see the likes of bodene Thompson and albert kelly in our team two real guns but the question would be at what price would they come.

 

[Real1]

The current salary cap situation is a bit of a mess, but it is what it is. Mainstream media is trying to paint us as the 2015 Newcastle Knights, but we are far from that. Unlike the Knights, we actually have representative-level players locked in for years to come which will entice free agents. The Knights had nobody, and their cap situation was far worse than ours is. They had no cap space with no quality players on their roster, at least we have some quality players.

We have to look at the positives.

1. We're a team with the best junior development system in the NRL behind Penrith. We've already seen how well our SG Ball side went this year with plenty of young talent being developed there, and we've also seen how many young guns are emerging from our ISP side. A testament to that is taking a look back at the NRL trials from earlier this year, seeing our ISP side beat the first-grade Panthers. Just looking at ISP, we have the form front-rower in the competition in Renouf To'omaga who will be making his NRL debut this week, we saw our captain Rhyse Martin STAR in his NRL debut last week, and we have the leading try-scorer in the entire ISP in Fa'amanu Brown. There is an abundance of young talent spread across both our junior development clubs as well as our ISP team, both of which will provide some young guns that we can interject into first grade over the next few seasons.


2. We already have 3 State of Origin representative forwards signed up for another few years in Dave Klemmer, Josh Jackson, and Aaron Woods. Considering how much competition there is in the NSW forward pack, to have three guys who have played for the state over the past few seasons puts us in a pretty good spot, and with the emergence of Raymond Faitala-Mariner, Rhyse Martin and Renouf To'omaga, we will likely have one of the best forward packs in the NRL for the next few years.

3. We have stability in the spine for the next few seasons. We have already signed Jack Cogger who has been praised by Matty Johns and his junior coaches for being an outstanding game-manager, having a solid kicking game and being a great defender for a halfback. He still has a long way to come, but he is a good young prospect and that will answer most of our questions at halfback for the foreseeable future. We have both Kieran Foran and Moses Mbye both signed until the end of 2020, and Michael Lichaa on-contract until the end of 2019. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Michael Lichaa bought-out by another club if he stays in reserve grade, but between Lichaa, Nu Brown and Marshall-King, I'm sure we will keep one of them as our hooker for the next few seasons. Regardless, we have Mbye locked down who has been a top 5 fullback this season and will only get better, we have Kieran Foran who will thrive with a game-manager playing next to him in the halves and is an International-Rep level player, and then with Cogger and Nu Brown/Lichaa/JMK, I'm feeling more comfortable about our spine moving forward than I did two years ago.

4. Depth in terms of outside backs. Put it this way. If our depth in terms of outside backs was an issue, we wouldn't have let go of Tyrone Phillips and Moses Suli. Between Marcelo Montoya, Will Hopoate, Kerrod Holland, Reimis Smith, John Olive and Lachlan Lewis, we have a bunch of young talented outside backs who could play first-grade for us over the next couple of seasons. We may even sign somebody to bring a bit of impact, but we don't lack depth in this department so we will be just fine.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we will be a premiership contender this year or next. All I'm saying is that when you take into consideration that we will have one of the better forward packs in the competition, as well as having stability in our spine and an array of great young talent coming through the ranks, we have the chance to make the 8 and compete every year. Just because we can't be the Sydney Roosters and sign the entire competition, it doesn't mean that we can't compete. Look at what the Warriors have done this year developing their young talent, and what the Tigers have done based off of attitude changes and the coaching staff turning C+ players into A- players.

At the end of this season, we stop paying for James Graham, The Morris Twins, Greg Eastwood and a few others. After a couple of season pass we will be able to sign some marquee players, but until then, we have an array of rep-level players locked-down and young talent coming through. The mainstream media are depicting us to have no money in the cap which isn't entirely true, we have money to sign a couple of mid-level players, but due to back-ended contracts, we can't go buying someone worth $700,000 for the next few years. I assume we will use our remaining cap space to re-sign our young talent such as Rhyse Martin and Asipeli Fine. To paint the picture, here is a rough idea of what the team will look like over the next few seasons.


1. Moses Mbye
2. John Olive/Reimis Smith
3. Lachlan Lewis/Kerrod Holland
4. Will Hopoate
5. Marcelo Montoya
6. Kieran Foran
7. Jack Cogger
8. Aaron Woods
9. Fa'amanu Brown/JMK/Michael Lichaa
10. David Klemmer
11. Raymond Faitala-Mariner
12. Rhyse Martin
13. Josh Jackson

14. Renouf To'omaga
15. Asipeli Fine
16. Adam Elliott
17. Jeremy Marshall-King/Michael Lichaa (Depending on whether we re-sign JMK)

When you take into consideration the fact that some of those young players will develop over the off-season, we have an abundance of talent there and some solid leadership in place to put us in the position to compete. Off the back of that forward pack with the addition of Cogger, we get better game-control than we've had in a few seasons, we get some punch off the bench with young forwards who can impact the game, and we will see the development of Moses Mbye at fullback as he continues to improve in that position.

Don't let the media make this worse than what it is, there is a good chance they're blowing the cap situation out of proportion, but even it is as bad as they say it is the line-up that we would have is actually pretty solid.

I just read that whole thing, I was waiting for a light at the end of the tunnel... all it did was depress me