Fifita

[jirskyr]

Interesting to read in today's SMH, an interview with David Fifita about why he thinks his brother has come into such good form. He attributes a lot of it to the birth of Fifita's son and a change in mentality / lifestyle / responsibility associated with that. David says Andrew used to spend a lot of his time partying and now he is more focussed, family-oriented and career-minded.

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/fifita-has-ground-to-make-up-to-catch-twin-brother-20130709-2poa4.html

These comments reinforce that a significant factor in a players "form" is his off-field life, of which you normally hear next to nothing. A football club has limited involvement in, or ability to predict/factor a player's personal life. And as fans, all we see is the 80 minutes each week, selective media coverage and some hearsay on the forums.

Whatever Fifita's potential, how was the Tigers management supposed to predict the impact of his future young family? By a similar argument, Bulldogs aren't responsible for Ben Barba's meltdowns and form issues, nor were we able to predict Rob Lui's off-field indiscretions.

So anyone who wants to say "it was obvious he was going to excel" - that is an argument I can never agree to. Nothing is obvious or guaranteed.

We don't even know how much Sharks are paying Fifita vs what money we had at the time. tig_prmz's link to the old discussion is sobering reading.

 

[pHyR3]

Hmm…any ideas on making BMM a father? :laughing:

 

[Zaibatsu]

I have to agree with what a few others here have said, I don't really blame the club too much on this one.

Fifita always had plenty of ability but I don't think many people would have expected him to take off like he has just recently, and to be honest I don't think it would have happened here at the Tigers, at least not to the extent it has at the Sharks anyway.

In a perfect world we'd keep every young player that shows promise but the nature of the game is clubs need to take risks and in hindsight now it appears to be a massive blunder to let him go, but you win some and you lose some.

We have ended up on the good end of such luck in the past ourselves, with an example being Princey, I wonder how a few of the Broncos fans were feeling in 2005 when he was wearing the clive churchill medal after the Broncos gave up on him after 2003…

Sh*t happens.

Sorry, but to me this is just head burying stuff. It was clear as day that Fifita had potential coming out of his backside and with the right nurturing he could have been anything. He had that x-factor early on that you just knew he was going to be a star.. The club stuffed up, it was a monumental blunder that has the potential to go down as the biggest recruitment/retention stuff up in the clubs history

The funny thing about it is, there were so many people saying good riddance and that he wouldn't amount to anything, well how wrong they were. So his attitude may have stunk, so what, he was 21, want to shoot him for being a kid who suddenly had the spot light put on him?, his attitude seems fine now with a bit of maturity. Obviously all he needed was a bit of guidance, something this club clearly wasn't interested in giving him

I don't know which blunder is worse, punting Fifita who has gone on to play Origin and will most likely get a call up for Australia at the end of the yr, or keeping Matt Groat, a guy who has played about 5 top grade games in 18 months and looked out of his depth in the NYC Origin game. Seriously, if you don't laugh you cry when you think about it.

I'm still of the opinion that the club's decision at the time wasn't necessarily a bad one.

Personally, I was 50/50 on it, I wanted him to stay but didn't think it was the end of the world to lose him either, and I think a lot of our fans thought pretty similar, he just wasn't putting in enough for us back then.

Potential is one thing, desire is another, and one thing that was pretty evident was that he didn't have the same desire at the Tigers as he does at the Sharks, whether that's our club's fault or his fault only Andrew will know, but I still completely believe that he would not be where he is today if he stayed with us, so it's a bit unfair to be too critical on the Tigers management on this one.

Just my opinion.

 

[Adman]

Who cares about Fafita. He might have turned out to be a dud just as much as a star. He blossomed under Flanagan. Good for him. Everyone wants the club to look and build towards the future, yet a majority of these types of posts keep crying and dwelling on the past. Start talking about whose coming through the ranks instead. It will make you feel better, I promise.

 

[Shooshmeister]

Who cares about Fafita. He might have turned out to be a dud just as much as a star. He blossomed under Flanagan. Good for him. Everyone wants the club to look and build towards the future, yet a majority of these types of posts keep crying and dwelling on the past. Start talking about whose coming through the ranks instead. It will make you feel better, I promise.

Well said!
:sign: