Farah will retire and Liddle hasn't shown enough to persist with him. Cook is one of the best hookers in the game. Enough waiting. Let's get the best players we can right now.
There are exactly two ways to win in the NRL:
- Have money to spend outside the cap.
- Get value out of your cap money.
Option one isn't available to the Tigers, so it has to be option two. Giving up on a promising (and cheap!) young player because he's been injured and replacing him with an admittedly good player on absolute top coin is exactly how you don't do option two. Jacob Liddle turned 22 a fortnight ago for god's sake, and 2018 was basically a write off for him because of injury. It would be borderline moronic to cut bait on him now.
Cool, and if he's still injured at 24 do we say "he just turned 24 a fortnight ago for god's sake"? Do we put all our eggs in one basket with a hooker that appears to be injured more than he's not? A team's spine needs to stay healthy for much of the year to remain competitive, and considering our number 6 AND our "future" number 9 are the very definition of injury prone, it's hard to see that happening. A couple of years ago I was a big fan of Liddle, I thought he had a massive future, but even last year when he came back from injury we looked worse when Farah came off and he went on.
Ivan was allegedly looking at Segeyaro for this season and re-signed Farah. Now Maguire is allegedly looking at Cook. If Liddle is our future then it's strange our past coach and now our new coach are looking at alternative hooking options. Unless all those rumours were incorrect of course..
Massive difference between Segeyaro and Cook. Segeyaro is at the back end of his career and presumably wouldn't have broken the bank, gives you a year or two of breathing room to work out what you have with Liddle and gives the youngster a fair chance of winning the starting spot. Cook is a rep player on absolutely top dollar who you'd basically be committing to as starter for the next four years and would completely block the path for Liddle.
Liddle is the main reason I think re-signing Farah was smart. He needs a chance to show whether or not he's up to it, while not debilitated by unhealed injuries. Farah is good enough, and presumably cheap enough, to give a year to see what we have with Liddle.