@avocadoontoast said in [Signing Suggestions & Rumours](/post/1214486) said:
Hooper reporting Staines looking for 4 year contract, $500k per season.
What’s he played, two games? Even $300k a season is overs.
We need to pay up to get talent, even if it's potential talent.
If you were interviewing for the same type of job with 5 different employers and got 5 offers, what would make you take the job with the least desirable employer? Money.
Unless we take some risks and buy on potential, we're going to be left with older, broken players and other clubs cast offs. Gotta role the dice otherwise we'll be crap forever.
I don’t see him being offered that anywhere. Give him $1.2million over 4 years. We need to take risk for sure and I think paying him even that is a risk, he can’t be expecting 500 grand a season.
The Knights signed Ponga for $700k a season after only playing two games. They took the risk and blew everyone out of the water. The year they bought him the Knights won only 1 game, this year they will play finals football.
We are as undesirable now as the Knights were in 2016.
If the reports are true and we are paying $600k for Leilua next year, $500k for one of the most highly touted young fullbacks in the game seems reasonable to me.
He doesn’t look like the next Ponga to me but I understand what you’re saying my point is more we shouldn’t pay that money if we don’t have to. I don’t see him getting offered that, maybe do a long deal where it’s $300k first year and goes up $100k every season over 4 years.
if there's one thing we all know it's that we will have to pay overs to get him
Yeah for sure would just rather do increases every year so he’s still getting paid a good amount over a long period and we aren’t spending huge money in the first season where he’s still finding his feet
We probably won’t even sign him anyway ?
I would rather take a huge risk with a guy who could be anything than throw money at old or broken down blokes like Reynolds, Packer, McQueen, Proctor. Spend big on the best youth in the game and see what happens. Everything else has failed.
Yeah I agree. If you’re gonna pay overs at least do it on kids who could become stars.
I hope they keep the development System for next season and we sign some more young rep stars. I’ve noticed William kei has been doing a lot of training with our first grade side so I reckon he’ll be one
When you buy a car do you all pay asking price .....
We need to haggle ..half a danari
Anyone who joins WT gets paid extra. We paid McQueen, Mbye etc more than their contract. We have been negotiating on price but pushing the figure up not down. So, consequently we have given ourselves a great opportunity to gather a team of individuals who may not really want to be here.
This appears to be much of the problem Madge and Hartigan have had to work through. It’s a little difficult to now say , hey we want players who want to be here first and foremost, then we can talk about fringe benefits.
Due to management incompetence ,and a desire for quick results , we now have this “pick up the scraps and pay a premium “ embedded into our culture.
I’m one of many who are really disappointed about the direction we have taken post the Tim Sheens era. Sheens was a big fan of grow your own talent and lock them up by treating them well and giving them contracts.
I put it to you, the players are not mentally tough because many of them are here for the wrong reasons.
I would definitely say some not necessarily many
I would definitely say too many.
It’s not easy to recognise them from statistics alone, you have to look closely at their discretionary effort. I suspect this is what Madge was looking at when he went to the sideline.
