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.