@happy_tiger Bingo~!

Now for all those talking pay cuts. Who is going to extend Reynolds contract to get him to sign the pay cut?
How about Packer? Give him an extra year, 5 at 500k instead of 4 at 600K? Anyone?

People like Lawrence will take a paycut. They will do this because they are club men and because they want to play out their time here. They also like playing with their friends, Packer now only has Mats.

So we can offer them out at 100k. Have Cronulla or the Storm buy them cheaply and go to the grand final. Do we like subsidizing their final’s trophies?

Or we could do a swap? No one is going to swap rocks for diamonds. We could possibly swap Packer for James Graham, but it would be a negative cash flow to us. Or we could offload Mattherson with Packer or McQueen! Get them off our books.

Truth is we have made an Omlette. We have signed their contracts, we cannot easily unsign them. Mistakes are easily made but expensively corrected.

@Elderslie_Tiger
People forget how desperate we were. We just had 3 of the big 4 walk after our entire team was geared around them. Reynolds was still a decent 5/8, solid defender and former blue. Do people remember we had next to no one signed when Cleary and co took over?

Everyone says punt Reynolds, fair enough. But we are saying this with Marshall rejoining our squad. Reynolds was the right call at the time and he just had way too many injuries. We could have made a long shot call for Maloney or Cronk, but we had Reynolds name on the contract.

It’s the Mbye signing that mystifies me.

Ok while we moan at the Roosters cap situation I have to do a C’mon.
Brett and Josh Morris were free agents, so we hire Mbye. We have seen both Morris’s perform at career best this year, Mbye has performed better then expected but… Still a lot of average for a very high price.

Then we make mr 750K captain.

Does anyone else wonder why we couldn’t hire DWZ? Why don’t we just hire Unkle Nick’s accountant. They seem to be able to recruit better then anyone else in league.

@Don_Kershane No no no.
Think differently.

Ok you are accused of roarting the cap. When suddenly you keep your two best juniors… If they kept Matterson and hired Brett Morris you would have everyone screaming.

People were not screaming because they shed some players. Heck they shed’d Pearce, SKD, Aiden Gurera (whatever his name is), etc. the year before. They also had great timing on those players, the guys they kept like Mitch Aubusson are still fighting fit (bar GF day, but they ticked on all year). I think the only player they could have passed on was Jake Friend.

@GNR4LIFE I would rate Hasler this year completely. You saw how Trent Barrett had a team and environment he considered uncoachable.
He took them to the finals and was missing Tommy Turbo most of the time. He does this regularly while Stuart did this when he gets the team he wants (cronulla one time, Canberra now).

What is interesting is the 3 ex tigers he gets the most out of. We knew Taupau was a bulldozer, but he has found his next gear at manly. Curtis Sironen is a good second rower while with us he did not seem to fit well. We lack the ability to convert a ball playing 5/8 to the second row and this should have happened to Reynolds and Farah. It has worked for Lawrence and is a far better way to move on ball players that are a little too slow then the infighting we have seen.

Lastly Suli, a person with talent and the work attitude of the Mt Druitt Centerlink line. He has turned into the good center we knew he was.

@851 Look, NO.

Cody Walker combines well with Adam Reynolds. But we have Marshall and Walters’s kid. We don’t need another 5/8. We need a hooker reserve as Liddle is not up to 80 min.

Although I reckon another rabbit could be an option, Reynolds.
Move Brooks to 5/8, he belongs there, his game management sucks, His speed and line passing rocks. We need to get Brooks out of Halfback.

Don’t get me wrong at all. I am 100% behind Brooks. He stuck with us we stick with him and it is good to see this loyal clubman. But move him to 5/8 or even fullback. Get Sezer or an actual halfback to steer the team…

Thats a thought. Would Ricky take Josh Reynolds for Sezer?

@TigerTiger I think it would help.
It means we go to the market with 500K and not 400k.
It also gives us leverage. For instance if the Titans are looking for Matto then we could talk Jai Arrow. Now we would have to throw in a lot for him but we can start saying “hey this is a contracted player, you want a replacement and you are loosing Arrow”.

I don’t think Jai will come here unless we spend crazy coin. IMHO I would rather push for the Broncos forwards then Jai.

Have we ever truly rebuilt.

I know we are sick of hearing “this will be a rebuilding year”. But every year we seem to sprint into 9th. Have we really rebuilt?

Had Benji and Farah not come back this year. I have little doubt we would be lower then the Dragons. Should we front end sign a few top end players, accept 12th instead of 9th for awhile and make a play for 2021/2022?

@OzLuke As bad as we are in Coaching management.
We are nothing compaired to Newcastle, Brisbane and Penrith this year.

My,… Knights sign all their cattle and get a top 4 team with bottom 4 results.
Penrith sign back Cleary for incredible coin… As gus said, you could have gone for Bennett.

Whatever we do we need to abandon the concept of Big 22!
Seriously I get the Big 17, we needed to step away from the Big 4 being key to the team. Haslier has done great at Manly particularly how his team was still an attacking force after Tommy Turbo got taken out. …

But Manly had been rolling with the least depth of any team in the comp. Put simply Juniors could step up. You had champions.

We instead have a lot of average. Our best players are Matterson, Twal and Benji if his game is on… not many more. We hired a lot of average this year.

I hope we go for broke. While we did better then Newcastle, Newcastle could threaten because they had great players. Canberra is in the finals because they left the fullback position open and a great junior really stepped up. US? we hired Mbye.