Wow talk about blowing a few uncontracted footballers out of the water! Broses will not like this news at all.
I'd love to know who has the money to afford Cronk right now, a million bucks free for next season. See the papers made all this nonsense talk about Tigers "allowing their top players to all be off contract at the same time" but not only did/do other clubs face that reality this year, it also allows you to make big changes to your roster when big events like this happen on the market.
Dragons just put down a lot of cash for Ben Hunt, might have some free money if Dugan leaves, but they'll be wanting to tie Widdop down surely? I don't know if any club can really afford two million-dollar footballers in the halves. If Dragons were to play for Cronk, they'd probably have to not re-sign Dugan and withdraw anything they may have offered for Tedesco. I don't see it.
Dogs, well they look likely to clear Reynolds but Moses Mbye is still on a pretty rich deal. They could sign Cronk in theory… they are blooding a few young guys right now who would be up for new contracts around when Cronk would retire. It's just the question of how much money they have tied up in their forward pack already and how long the Morris twins have to run on their contracts.
Sharks are no chance, they have enough trouble retaining their current roster.
I don't see Manly, again the the issue of already spending $1M in your halves. Plus Manly have a lot of new recruits, I can't see them having much spare.
Parramatta - possibly. But again Norman is going to be on big dollars, they'd probably be able to make space but would have to go light somewhere front or back. In other words you can't have $2M in the halves, a million-dollar forward and a million-dollar fullback.
Souths - Reynolds was re-signed as was Cody Walker. GI and S Burgess are early days into rich deals.
Penrith - no chance, they are locked for halves just now.
Broncos would be all over this if not for the fact Cronk is leaving specifically for Sydney. Bad luck for them, they look like missing out on Ash Taylor too.
That leaves Tigers to consider. Lots of room to move here, so many contracts ending in 2017\. Tigers have no money committed to the halves yet and previous talk was of pretty big salaries, so you'd have to imagine we could mobilise the kind of pay Cronk would command. Big question is whether we do this for a short-term gain, because you'd surely have to let go of one or both of Broses. Those boys, if they get it together, could have many years in front of them, Cronk has perhaps 2.
But as the paper noted Cronk is on the back of Dally M and Golden Boot, he is a fitness fanatic and doesn't have a history of bad injury. He'd be a decent bet to stay fit and firing for the contract duration.
So the second big question becomes - if we were to seriously go for Cronk, what do you do with the 5/8th spot? At this time Moses is the clear 5/8th, but he's also probably the most expensive of Broses and also the biggest risk I think (variable form and always a question in defence).
Or come at it from another angle, what happens if you do get an agreement from Cronk, because surely he's keen to talk turkey soon, what if you get Cronk in and then turn back to Tedesco, Woods etc. and say: "this is our tentpole signing, to build the club around next 2-3 seasons". You only need a few good years to set up a new culture/direction for a club.
Or we can keep the underperforming kids we have, and just hope the new coach can do some magic?
I would LOVE for Cronk to come to Tigers, easily the biggest-name signing we'd ever have had.
