@jai_donaldson said in [Signing Suggestions & Rumours](/post/1483153) said:
> > > > > I felt at the time it was a nervous knee jerk reaction by the club due to Dragons offering him about the same. 2yrs max at that stage would have been more than fair, possibly even 1yr with a 2nd in clubs favour given there was no real extended periods of form to gauge him off.
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> > > > Depends on the value of the deal. If it's a long-term cheap extension, or with incentives for better / continued performance, then I am fine with that.
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> > > > It's like Jimmy Jet - very little return in 2021, but at very low cost, so there's not much risk associated with it. Musgrove would be the same if he's not overly expensive but is locked in. Otherwise you are constantly rotating your backups every 2 years and you don't have much consistency of the system.
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> > > > Clearly Madge knows Musgrove from his Souths days, brought him over, waited for his ban to conclude, then re-signed him: so Madge rates his potential long-term value. Musgrove is also arguably rock-bottom price right now, i.e. we are buying in at the low end of his potential cost.
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> > > > It's the long-term high-cost signings we need to worry about. Musgrove is easily above reserve-grade level, so there's no argument that he cannot be a good backup option. These are "Benji-Lite" type deals where there capability of the player is established, and you agree to the cost/risk relationship of having them as backup, or potentially Top 17 if form / injuries warrant.
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> > > > Bearing in mind also if we want to retain Stefano long-term and perhaps partner him with another notable prop, we are going to need much cheaper but decent-quality, reliable, in-system backups (if you are going to invest $700-900K on your top-tier prop).
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> > > So Musgrove is on a long term deal on over 400k, is that a low risk contract to you?
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> > We don't know what he is on. We never will. I don't get into speculation about possible deal values. I'll let the club consider low / medium / high costs.
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> If you don't know what he is on how do you know we got him at "arguably rock bottom price"?
I didn't say we got him at rock bottom price, I said he is "arguably at rock bottom price right now" and "we are buying in at the low end of his potential cost". This is based on having played only 11 games in the past 4 years, some well-documented off-field incidents and the fact that Madge is the only coach he's ever had.
You would have to assume that if Musgrove was playing good footy for several consecutive seasons, he'd be more expensive than he is right now.
Of course Tigers could be paying excessive or stupid money for Musgrove, but I doubt the market pressures or stupidity currently exist for that to happen. The extended contract occurred during the current management tenure (Pascoe / Madge / Hartigan), and typically we have been doing deals on the cheap within this tenure (even to the point of being accused of refusing to compete with other clubs on certain signatures).