Adam Blair

[stevetiger]

so its his fault we were stupid enough to pay overs for him?

if you pay a million dollars for an average player then demand superstar-esque performances you're going to be disappointed a lot…

Its not his fault and I'm not blaming him. The thing is he is getting paid overs and as soon as his contract is up he has to go or at best get a massive pay downgrade.

 

[Mona_Lolesi]

So you concede that pressure on the kicker is not an important part of defending?

You would rather us stand back and give JT, Reynolds, DCE and co time to do whatever they want with the ball?

Well, I might be saying that. Or I might be saying that pressuring the kicker is not the kind of thing that it needs a top-paid, rep-level back rower to do. I mean, if Farah spent every training session carrying bottles of water to and from the sheds, and I then suggested this might not be an adequate use of his talents, would you then say "What do you want the players to do? Die of thirst?"

Ignoring the blatant embellishment and irrelevance of your example, it is an aspect he brings to his game in addition to other more subtle elements he brings onto the field.

If you want to compare him to equivalent salaries that's fine. Unfortunately the Tigers ability to scout and poach players has been so poor that if we were to get a Watmough, Burgess etc we would have had to have paid 900k to attract them and then we would all be blowing up that they weren't giving us 900k of service.

 

[2041]

So you concede that pressure on the kicker is not an important part of defending?

You would rather us stand back and give JT, Reynolds, DCE and co time to do whatever they want with the ball?

Well, I might be saying that. Or I might be saying that pressuring the kicker is not the kind of thing that it needs a top-paid, rep-level back rower to do. I mean, if Farah spent every training session carrying bottles of water to and from the sheds, and I then suggested this might not be an adequate use of his talents, would you then say "What do you want the players to do? Die of thirst?"

Ignoring the blatant embellishment and irrelevance of your example, it is an aspect he brings to his game in addition to other more subtle elements he brings onto the field.

If you want to compare him to equivalent salaries that's fine. Unfortunately the Tigers ability to scout and poach players has been so poor that if we were to get a Watmough, Burgess etc we would have had to have paid 900k to attract them and then we would all be blowing up that they weren't giving us 900k of service.

I appreciate your magnanimity in ignoring the embellishment and irrelevance of my example, given your options were (a) Blair rush the kicker and (b) no-one at all rush the kicker. I mean, far be it from me to suggest this whole discussion went dangerously off into utter irrelevance exactly at the point when it excluded © whoever happens to be closest rush the kicker, like seems to work for every other team in the comp.

Also, what the Tigers may or may not have to pay for other players is also irrelevant given it's also based on nothing. If the club is, for some reason, genuinely unable to recruit marquee players for anything like value then clearly it shouldn't recruit at all and instead use all its cap space on retaining juniors and swiping other people's juniors. But I don't see how that's relevant to the actual point I've been making throughout, which is that all this stuff about the little things Blair supposedly does is virtually meaningless relative to the big things he consistently fails to do.

 

[Tim Sheens]

I don't recall anyone on here ever saying that his onfield performance has matched his ???????? salary. However, what he contributes to our club off the field is something that few players can provide, thus bringing his value into line with what he supposedly earns, particularly in the current market.

Others constantly get on here _itching and moaning about his effort, when the guy puts in plenty and it is not his fault that they can't or won't recognise it.

 

[2041]

I don't recall anyone on here ever saying that his onfield performance has matched his ???????? salary. However, what he contributes to our club off the field is something that few players can provide, thus bringing his value into line with what he supposedly earns, particularly in the current market.

Others constantly get on here _itching and moaning about his effort, when the guy puts in plenty and it is not his fault that they can't or won't recognise it.

1) There is no way in hell his contribution off the field justifies the salary cap hit he represents. I'd rather have $200k to add to Tedesco's offer and a moody dickhead with middling first-grade abilities in the back row than lose Tedesco to the Bulldogs and have great dude Blair. Why is it always mug teams like the Tigers who have to desperately pretend that half the money in all the rubbish contracts they've written is worth spending because the useless players it's being spent on are good for morale or some such? Do you hear the Bulldogs saying "Yeak 850k for Fifita sounds a lot, but it's actually only 650k worth of being an utter beast of a prop who destroys opposition defences like he's running through five-year-olds - the other 200k is because he leads a great sing song on the team bus and can light his own farts. You just can't put a value on that (other than 200k)."
2) I can't speak for anyone else, but my view on Blair isn't based on my perception of his effort. As it happens I do wonder why he's such a poor stat generator, yes. But if he's the hardest worker in the game I wouldn't dispute it. In fact I think it's distinctly possible that he works really hard and he's just not very good.

The bottom line in this argument is that you've got one group of people who say "this guy has never remotely justified his salary and, by virtue of that single fact, is a disaster for the club". Then there are a bunch of people responding with things like:
- Actually he's better than you realise on the field because he does stuff like charging kickers and dummy runs.
- He's not good on the field but he does so much off it that it doesn't matter.
- It's not his fault he's getting paid too much.
- It doesn't matter whether he's any good or not because he's trying really hard.

Which are, in order, wrong, wrong, irrelevant and irrelevant.