@alexaki said:
On a second note….How do the Roosters and Dragons get away with having their talent under the cap?
These conspiracy theory posts always bore me.
Plenty of other club's fans wonder how the Tigers managed to re-sign off contract players last season, not lose anyone of note and keep Marshall, Lawrence, Tuqiri, Farah and Ellis (who would all be on big money) in the same squad. In fact I recall posters on other forums wondering how the Tigers were under the cap when we signed Tuqiri at the beginning of the year last year.
As to the question of how teams like the Dragons manage to stay under the cap without shedding players, the obvious answer is **_they don't!_**
The Dragons had to shed a regular international (Jeremy Smith) and a Queensland State of Origin regular (Neville Costigan) at the end of last season and are losing Darius Boyd (who'd be on good money) to the Knights at the end of this season.
In fact if you look at the Dragons squad, they don't really have any super star style big name players outside of Gasnier, Boyd and Cooper. Most of the players in their side were average no name sort of players who have become SOO players under Bennett, blokes like Trent Merrin and Beau Scott.
Now as these players get older and establish them selves as rep players, they'll begin to demand bigger contracts and the Dragons will be forced to continue shedding players. It's how the salary cap works.
And, if the Dragons were to decide their forward pack needed a shake up and they wanted to sign a player the calibre of Adam Blair, they'd obviously need to shed more players.
None of this seems too complicated to me. It's the realities of operating under a salary cap. I don't think we need to look for conspiracies around every corner.
