I can see where you're coming from but how else do they handle it? When you let players negotiate it creates an air of uncertainty amongst the rest of the playing group and understandably so. I really cant see how else they could have handled it.
The club is being reactive….not pro active. If you manage your cap and dont try to play by your own rules, you can re-write a roster over a few seasons....not the middle of one.
This is all a result of cap mismanagement, disguised as a pack makeover, dont kid yourself.
At the start of the year we were no. 2 premiership favourite.
The line that divides.....I wish they told me when I coughed up my hard earned for my membership that this year would be a write off....they dont get my money any more until those that have stuffed us up are gone
Have a good look chris, the club is not blameless here
Yeah at the start of the season we were second favourites. Then we did this: lost to Bulldogs, scraped home over the Warriors, beat Raiders, lost to the Roosters, beat Souths, lost to the Titans, lost to the Broncos. That's nearly a third of the way through the season and we've played well for, what, one and a half games? Against Souths and the putrid Raiders? Forgive me for saying that if it was at this point that club management started thinking "maybe we haven't got a premiership team here" then I'd rather they started planning for 2012 than just ignoring it.
Face it, these people do know something about the game. It's not good enough to hope to hit a run at the back end of the season, scrape in 6th-8th position and get lucky in the finals. We've got a few years of the best player in the world as our playmaker and some good young forwards coming through - the ambition for the club ought to be becoming a dominant force, minor premiership contender type of outfit.
The fact is that we haven't been there; ok we came third last season but that was with the Storm out of the running and Manly injury-ravaged in the run in. We didn't even get best of the rest and our for and against was testament to how we failed to dominate games throughout the season - take out the last 15 minutes against Penrith and the Warriors home game and we'd be in negative for and against territory.
This season we have been poor. Even if we accept the line that the on-field performances have been related to the nebulous 'uncertainty' I would make two points: (1) we were going poorly before any of this Blair stuff happened, and (2) if 'uncertainty' is enough to turn you into a bad player I don't want you at the club anyway. The Dragons somehow seem to be going ok despite knowing their coach is gone: why are our blokes so (supposedly) mentally weak that they can't aim up because they don't know if their mates will be there next year? Boo hoo. Get on with the job.
One final point to those saying "we ought to be getting rid of Fulton rather than Heighington". Have you considered that no offers have come in for Fulton that are better than what he's on for next year? I've said this before, but we don't get to just ring up some crappy club or Superleague and say "we want rid of these blokes, please send a cab".