Quote BrisbaneRhino="BrisbaneRhino"Marty - hall didn't matter as much as the others.
We gambled on Sutcliffe coming through in 2016 which was fair enough as we still had McGuire, but he was utterly out of his depth. Instead of getting someone else in we went with moon, who again was carried by McGuire in 2017.
Why nobody seemed to realise we needed 2 halfbacks for 2018 is beyond me. Then having seen that fail we sign a reserve grade full back as one of our main playmakers. Utterly bonkers.
As for props, Galloway was a dinosaur in the NRL who hadn't looked like a first grade prop for years. Peteru had barely played when we signed him. These guys were supposed to replace JP and Kylie??? Garbutt has since left as well, so we're 3 class props down with only Ava looking the part as replacement.
As an aside I bet GH kept thinking he'd unearth another Kylie - in fact he was the exception that proved the rule that if you pay peanuts....
Then there was the whole hooker debacle which still isn't sorted.
In the meantime players like Austin, David Fifita etc have come to SL and we haven't signed one of the many good English players who have come off contract since 2015 - pretty much every player in SL would have been potentially available since then.
Now we've gone from a club that players might have been willing to play for on slight unders to one where they probably want a premium to join.
And few decent juniors over the last five years - Walker, Newman, Oledzki, maybe Smith.
All in all a complete and utter shambles.'"
Pretty good summary to me.
On their own many of the signings would be ok, but when grouped together over a period they just haven't been good enough for the players they were replacing.
To me there's are some bad decisions and there has been done bad luck. Ferres should have improved our squad, but just has been ravaged by injury.
We also seen to have signed ok players like myler, and then not had soave for some real class like Hastings, widdop or Austin.
Overall the buck stops with hetherington. He's the common factor in the whole mess. It's on his head
