@cqtiger said:
Its mostly about a club's culture more than anything else. The Rooters, Bulldogs, Cowbies, Eels, Panthers, Saints and now Souths are clubs that will wave big money at most "stars" that become available. Most of them have done it for years. Tigers, Raiders and Newcastle can't or won't make regular big plays at just anyone. The Boncos have never really "raided" stars as they believe that most big names would prefer to come to their winning culture for less dollars - it seems to work for them (but I suspect under the table deals that are hard to prove through their "Thoroughbreds").
The NRL can't often prove dishonesty of the salary cap so on that we have to accept that everyone usually plays by the rules.
My view is this: Firstly, the Tigers over the last few years have relied heavily on their juniors successfully coming through the ranks. To an extent that some of our juniors were being paid part of the top squad salary cap to keep them at the club. The lesson here is that we have been let down by our juniors not coming through to full first grade standard together. I also believe that our first few years as a joint venture club we burnt our fingers on some players that we bought and we haven't forgotten that. However, since then we have turned the club around from a laughing stock (Lamb, Field & Hoppa) to a very successful club off field at least.
Secondly: Every club uses the Pareto rule - 80% of your money goes to 20% of your players. The 20% of our players on the good money have been fine when they were injury free. We have been let down by the majority of the other 80% of players not being up to finals standard. The Storm seem to be best at this by keeping the nucleus of stars at the club and every year bringing in fringe players that step up.
I do feel that injuries have hurt us at very critical periods over the last few years but that's footy I guess.
I agree w/ you cq - but what you failed to mention is that we are attempting to build a relatively frugal culture of picking & developing our own stars and contracting other club's fringe players to make them top class players.
Someone said that Whatuira was a bum when he came to the club - however while I initially had that same feeling - Paul came to the club w/ a Premiership ring & won me over w/ his competitiveness, composure & ability in his three years as a Tiger! That is the sort of player that we seek to cultivate!
He also referred to Ellis in the same manner. Just because Gareth had not played NRL did not mean that he had not established himself as a champion back-rower! He could have cost any ESL team over a million dollars a year if Leeds released him to a rival - but the three time Golden Boot Finalist chose to come to us to play football (for good money but a relative pittance in potential earnings). He has proven himself to be the marquee signing for the NRL in 2009 - not just the Tigers!!!- !!!
Some of our juniors had become complacent & have now moved on to greener pastures. As we all know a change of scenery can do some players the world of good. However our new breed of juniors/U20s in 2009 are competitive - successful & committed and there are more to come from Keebra & Matraville + Holy Cross & St Gregs in 2010!
A poor example of management is that St George paid a ridiculous amount for Tagive given his medical issues. The Broncos did the same w/ Te'o last year! If you want us to frivolously throw our money at every off-contract bloke w/ a media profile whose manager has a mortgage to cover on his 17th house - then the Tigers as a club and commercial entity will not last the next 10 years!
The culture that cq refers to is not unlike what we saw from Easts - Manly & Canterbury in the 80s & Wests + Parra in the 90s. (For those old Magpie supporters I refer to the likes of Hill - Dymock - Farrar - Langmack - Leeds - Thomas - Gillespie - Lindner etc in the early 90s & for Eels we have Pay - Smith - Dymock - McCracken - Freeman - Johnston - Raper - Ritson etc in the post SL late 90s.)
I would proffer the question - how many of those ready-bought teams comprising a 50% new squad have gone on to win a GF?
ANSWER - None - not even the Bulldogs could pull it off w/ their brilliant new squad this year!
Developing a champion team requires time & while there may need to be some tweaking around the periphery - you need to retain a consistent core of players and that is also what the club has achieved w/ the likes of Farah, Marshall & Galloway on long-term contracts.
Melbourne are the benchmark in this respect & one bargaining chip they have is the offer of improving a player & making him a marketable commodity for other teams (e.g. Ben Cross, Jake Webster, Nathan Friend, Jeff Lima, Ryan Tandy etc). However - because they have confidence in turning average players into first graders - they pay a relative minimum until they make a name for themselves (e.g. Cross - Jeremy Smith - Blair - Lima - Nielsen - Matt King etc).
I think we as a club may have made some very prudent recuitments for 2010 (& the fact that the club has remained quiet about such things is a perfectly professional & ethical thing to do) - think back to Gallop's favorite CEO Todd Greenberg announcing a new sponsorship w/ a compnay I cannot name w/out NRL approval only to have it canned and a squad's worth of jerseys destroyed.
If we get Lima back by ethically approaching the club for a negotiated release we have bought back a piece of the farm & have done it w/ honour & w/out throwing cash around like sailors in Kings Cross!!
