We announced Crichton in May and Morris announced he was leaving later that year around July. Morris was released due to salary cap issues which I struggle to understand. Morris would have been our longest serving player and surely eligible for the additional salary cap allowance.
Also if we were in cap trouble why not promote a junior? I’d love to know how much we ‘saved’ in offloading Morris but signing Crichton.
This is the same year we offloaded Woods and Mbye midseason so it’s quite obvious our recruitment and retention plan is either non existent or poorly executed
Let me start by saying - I was not a fan of the signing then, and my fears came to fruition when we saw this bloke in FG.
The writing was on the wall with the Morris boys. The club knew we were not re-signing them, so they had to make a play. Pay was a first year FG coach, and had little money to play with and chose the middle ground - a player with FG experience, comes on the cheap - and is willing to provide support to your squad for 3 years.
If you're a first time coach, dealing with a salary cap that is in dire straits, then you take those bargains where you can.
Did it turn out to be a good buy? No.
Will Pay's tenure as how head coach fall because of one mediocre/bad decision? Hell no.
Was it the worst signing in history? Fuck no.
My point is - context is very important here. Our coach made a signing based on the limited cap space he had, with small amount of funds, and signed a player with FG experience for an extended contract for, what I understand, dirt cheap money. This provided us with depth, and security at a time when we were severely constrained thanks to Ray Ray and the Des-aster.
The end.