Signings, Suggestions & Rumours Discussion

he is better than wakeham but not as good as Brooks.
if we land fainu then great move if not and we end up with flannigan or wakeham then stupid move considering Brooks and Sheens wanted him

That's all i was asking, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel everyone has rejected us. Brooks was always gone imo he's been agitating for 18 months and the first offer he got that he was able to accept he was off. I get the feeling everyone bar Sheens and Benji read the room in that regard.
I wouldnt be surprised if all else fails we end up with both Flanagan and Wakeham, but im hoping they pull out a Trindall or maybe someone like Lam from England.
We seemingly didnt even try for Sexton because we're looking for someone more experienced.
 
That's all i was asking, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel everyone has rejected us. Brooks was always gone imo he's been agitating for 18 months and the first offer he got that he was able to accept he was off. I get the feeling everyone bar Sheens and Benji read the room in that regard.
I wouldnt be surprised if all else fails we end up with both Flanagan and Wakeham, but im hoping they pull out a Trindall or maybe someone like Lam from England.
We seemingly didnt even try for Sexton because we're looking for someone more experienced.
sezer or Schneider I reckon we will end up with
As for Brooks Sheens and Marshall must be the only coaches in the nrl who are not allowed to sign a player they both wanted...
hope Fulton lands fainu or we are in trouble
 
That's all i was asking, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel everyone has rejected us. Brooks was always gone imo he's been agitating for 18 months and the first offer he got that he was able to accept he was off. I get the feeling everyone bar Sheens and Benji read the room in that regard.
I wouldnt be surprised if all else fails we end up with both Flanagan and Wakeham, but im hoping they pull out a Trindall or maybe someone like Lam from England.
We seemingly didnt even try for Sexton because we're looking for someone more experienced.
I'm hoping we have a chance with Trindall but expect if Ben Hunt leaves St George that Flanngan may also be on the look out for a 7 and history will show that recruiting has never been a problem for him. Whether that was club over coach I guess we will see.
 
BTW i think we have the Fainu boys, which is probably what prompted Lee to shoot his trap off again about the recruitment drive.

BTW i think we have the Fainu boys, which is probably what prompted Lee to shoot his trap off again about the recruitment drive.

On SEN today it was suggested by the ‘hat’ that tigers are about to “embark on a very aggressive recruitment drive” hopefully it is with quality players willing to say ‘y
Recruitment drive…..sure he was talking about the WT or perhaps it was Brydens….😂
 
sezer or Schneider I reckon we will end up with
As for Brooks Sheens and Marshall must be the only coaches in the nrl who are not allowed to sign a player they both wanted...
hope Fulton lands fainu or we are in trouble

Fair enough I don’t know anything about this Schneider bloke Sezer could be a half decent stop gap I guess.
As for Sheens & Marshall they may have wanted to re sign Brooks but Brooks didn’t want to be re signed. We would have only been his back up plan, clubs have been able to sign him for ages Moses has had Manly’s pant down imo getting him the deal he got. Manly could be in a bit of trouble if Moses keeps bringing more and more of his players in he’ll have them by the balls like he did with us.
 
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There's a bit of delusion in this post. The dogs are/were top 2-4 in every junior grade this season. Our boys are scrapping to make the finals. They have better juniors than we do, and much greater depth than we do.

Gus is also as much of a cancer as he is a God to the media
I'll put my hand up that I don't watch juniors every week, but if the Bulldogs are so competent in junior grades 2023, where are those players coming into Firsts? They've bought in 75% of their first grade squad.
 
I'll put my hand up that I don't watch juniors every week, but if the Bulldogs are so competent in junior grades 2023, where are those players coming into Firsts? They've bought in 75% of their first grade squad.
its got me stuffed were 1st graders come from.i trawled thru 4 years of Big Leage mag from the U/ 20's comp days 4/5 years after it finished and only 14 players had made it 2 1st grade from lower grades,7 dogs 4 canberra etc.the churn rate is astronomical.times are a changing but is it better to buy proven /up n comers as the roosters n melbourne do? a reason the draft is difficult,no imput from the clubs financially basically funded by the nrl,tribalism out the window in the process
 
Can we not go out and buy other teams reject’s.
Flanagan can’t get a start as a 1/2 at the dog’s they would prefer to play Burton out of position than give Flanagan another chance.
Moving him to hooker and talking him up so another team might buy him (please not us)
Rather spend money on a young kid not knowing what they could end up like, than signing a player that hasn’t looked much at another club for a couple of years,
And then having to listening to everyone saying you knew what he was like before you brought him.
A kid might end up a dud but you never know could just be the one you have been looking for.
 
I'll put my hand up that I don't watch juniors every week, but if the Bulldogs are so competent in junior grades 2023, where are those players coming into Firsts? They've bought in 75% of their first grade squad.
We all think we have the greatest juniors, but the fact is every other club has good juniors too. But they also have good older players too

Dogs won Matt's, 8th in Ball, and currently 2nd in Flegg and 1st in NSW cup. They're building a wealth of talent, across all grades. Meanwhile we're second last in flegg and NSW cup, and didn't do much in Ball or matts this year.

Like us, they had average players in the senior squad, but they have decent players who are competing and winning at all grades. Eventually they'll be ready guys first grade. Whereas we have basically surrendered another year of flegg and Cup by not recruiting and also bafflingly holding back the promotion of our youngsters.

The fact we're relying on juniors yet have no plan to expose and develop them through the grades shows all the flaws in our setup. We may still be able to get it right, but we haven't got off to a great start.
 
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We all think we have the greatest juniors, but the fact is every other club has good juniors too. But they also have good older players too

Dogs won Matt's, 8th in Ball, and currently 2nd in Flegg and 1st in NSW cup. They're building a wealth of talent, across all grades. Meanwhile we're second last in flegg and NSW cup, and didn't do much in Ball or matts this year.

Like us, they had average players in the senior squad, but they have decent players who are competing and winning at all grades. Eventually they'll be ready guys first grade. Whereas we have basically surrendered another year of flegg and Cup by but recruiting and promoting our youngsters very very slowly.

The fact we're relying on juniors yet have no plan to expose and develop them through the grades shows all the flaws in our setup. We may still be able to get it right, but we haven't got off to a great start.
It's interesting that Gus said last night on 100% Footy that he thinks Bulldogs are 3-4 years behind Tigers in Pathways development. As originally quoted to me by bathursttiger.

I also honestly don't think you need great junior sides across the board, of course though it doesn't hurt, but that having a great SG Ball or Flegg side is only a fraction of the story, if most of those boys don't go on to first grade. In other words the lower grade results are not necessarily an indicator of the quality of candidates coming through that actually will play first grade.

E.g. even within our own juniors, the 2012 and 2013 SG Ball back-to-back premiers, most of them didn't go anywhere near first grade
2012
1 Mason Farrell, 2 Max Dimarco, 3 Leva Li, 4 Nathan Milone, 5 Paul Simona, 6 Mitchell Moses ( C ), 7 Mark Daoud, 8 Leki Taumalolo, 9 Manaia Cherrington, 10 Fosio Tatola, 11 Salesi Funaki (Junior's bro), 12 Daniel Rakvin, 13 Andrew Kazzi, Interchange 14 Jason Vikilani, 15 Rhys Armstrong, 16 Matthew Woods, 17 Lolo Funaki
There's one legitimate career first-grader there

2013
1 Camden SUTTON, 2 Jayden WHEELHOUSE, 3 Tom SATTERTHWAITE, 4 Jaleel SEVE-DERBAS, 5 John TOHI, 6 Rhys ARMSTRONG, 7 Jeremy MARSHALL-KING, 8 Fosio TATOLA (c), 9 Jack WHEELHOUSE, 10 Dwayne LEMAFA, 11 Junior TATOLA, 12 Matthew WOODS (c), 13 Peter TA’AUSO, 14 Pio SOKOBALAVU, 15 Tyler CASSEL, 16 Adam SPICER, 17 Chris MOANA
1 decent first-grade here (Junior Tatola) and a respectable bloke recently eking out a career (JMK)

So let's call it 2.5 career first graders from two premiership junior teams, and both of these teams went on to win the U18s National Championship

I'm not saying you are wrong, I am just noting that Gould himself says Tigers are ahead in pathways development and commented that Bulldogs should have started the same process 6-7 years ago.
 
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