@Milky said in [Signing Suggestions & Rumours](/post/1022908) said:
Will Pascoe be held accountable for our salary cap position too?
We had every player off contract last year, Clearly was able to splash big money at nuffie players.
In that time, we missed out on names like Klemmer, Napa, Pearce, Ponga, Gagai, Roberts, etc.
I don't want to hear, 'how are we going to attract big name players?'. If Knights and Dogs can do it, so can we.
We even missed out on keeping Papahyuzen because we had Tedesco...both were off contract at the same time. If you're going to set an ultimatum for Tedesco, keep the best young fullback in the game...
We constantly sign left overs, Mbye was a dud at the Dogs. There is a reason they let him go.
I'm afraid we now have to wait until 2021, when all the big names come off contract to sign more dud players on large wages.
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DWZ was snapped up by the dogs, Christian Welch probably will be too...Two players that could have had a big impact on our roster.
I'm sorry but this is wrong on very many levels. "We missed out" assumes we were trying to sign or available to sign certain players. For example, Pearce signed with Knights only after Roosters released him after signing Cronk. We had already signed Reynolds months prior because we could not afford to wait for Cronk to make up his mind. Klemmer expressly signed with a non-Sydney club for family reasons - how are we gonna sign the bloke to leave Canterbury and move 10 minutes down the road to Concord?
Yes Paps was released because of Tedesco, but your logic does not follow. You can't keep on an emerging young talent for significant $$$ just in case your superstar FB leaves the club. What if Tedesco doesn't leave and now you have 2 first-grade level FBs tying up a bunch of your money? Paps signed with Melbourne in March 2017 and Tedesco left in May 2017 - big gap in football terms, especially when you have to remember that JT got fired and Cleary signed BETWEEN those two signings.
Ponga?!?!? The dude signed with Knights in 2016 and Tedesco still had a year to run. No way would you be outlaying money for Ponga when, at the time, you had Tedesco, Brooks and Moses all locked in 1, 6, 7.
Roberts signed by Broncos in December 2015, I fail to see how that has anything to do with Cleary or this conversation.
So blokes like Pearce, Ponga, Klemmer, they aren't taking 650K deals like the "nuffies" that we signed. Ponga might be on that right now but his next deal is $1M easily.
You have missed the point completely. 'Missed out' means you didn't sign them, regardless of whether we attempted, we should have.
Patience prevails, we should have waited just the way Knights waited. We signed a bloke who has played no more than 10 games in his time at the club on 750k. We tied up 750k on a player we did not even need. We could have persisted with Brooks and Marshall, as we currently are, until a better halfback hits the matker.
Sure, we missed Klemmer because he wanted to make a move for his family, why didn't we approach Napa? Obviously he was on the outer at the Roosters...
Re Papahyuzen: We set an ultimatum for Tedesco at the time. Take it or leave it. We did that with no intention of locking up the best young fullback in the game at the time. The people on the inside know much more than we do, and im certain there would have been a strong indiciation he was leaving prior to him actually leaving.
Oh in that case I missed out on inventing dynamite because I wasn't alive back then and I also missed out on the moon landing because I similarly wasn't alive. I've missed out on meeting aliens because we haven't met aliens yet. I've missed out on flying because I don't happen to have wings or hollow bones.
Let us now all mention the things we missed out on because they didn't happen, regardless of whether or not they could have happened, or we tried to make them happen.
Knights didn't WAIT for players anyway, your narrative is all messed up. They made large value offers to many many footballers, don't you remember? For years they were throwing money around and failing to lure players. You seem to be talking them up as a success story, but they **won three consecutive wooden spoons** between 2015-2017 - that's a very rock-bottom place to start and to be in the market to offer big contracts. Knights had a string of lucky pickups through Pearce and Klemmer; the other were solid though not marquee signings - Buhrer, Ese'ese, Edrick Lee, Glasby etc. Knights gambled on Ponga a little and it turned out to be a master stroke, good for them.
No idea whether we did or did not approach Napa, so you can't contend that we did not.
The ultimatum for Tedesco was set after Papenhuyzen already left and was set by the incoming coach. It was set because he was stringing us along and we needed to make other decisions. But sure, bring up all the nonsense and things that were never going to happen, or were never capable of happening, just because they didn't happen - put that all on Pascoe or someone else at the Tigers.