I don't fully agree with TerryM's post but I can understand where he's coming from.

wasnt robbie offered as part of a swap deal for ellis?

Reardon and Langley.

That was Reardon and Langley wasn't it?


At the time, we all went crazy that the club would offer those 2. In retrospect, it would been a bloody good deal....

I am sure Hape would have honoured his contract if we had insisted, but I don't think you can realistically expect the best from someone if they're not happy being somewhere.


But we hadn't seen the star quality from Hape last year. Perhaps his mind was already elsewhere but I got the impression some of his play was a little bit less than 100%. The away game at Catalans was one such game that springs to mind. They kicked through and Hape pretty much stood and watched rather than dive on the ball.

Why not, Jamie Peacock and Leon Pryce didn't let their team mates down in 2005 did they? Did you expect anything less from them when they were unhappy?



Maybe he was just out of form, it does happen. It doesn't mean that he was purposely playing bad because he wanted out. Who's to say that it wouldn't have picked up. I can't see a player of that quality staying out of form for so long and in my opinion it wasn't terrible anyway.

It's a fair point, I suppose each case is different. I guess it would depend on how desperate said player was to go, you'd have to ask Hape that or the people who allowed him to leave.


Who knows how he would have gone if he had stayed. However after having 3 knee reconstructions I think it was safe to say he was likely to struggle to get back to how he was at his very best.

I think at the time i was one of the only people unhappy that we didn't see that deal through.

I think all of our actual sales have been justified. But the concept of a selling club itself is outmoded. Its really a question of whether or not we're spending to the cap limit.

If what we read in the T&A article is true and Sam wants to play down under, then I for one won't hold that against him. I think there's two ways of looking at this;
Do we allow an NRL club to buy Sam, the artcle states that the Aussies would be unwilling to part with a large sum of cash, rather a player exchange, and as a result quota rules will be problem (which one player would you swap for Sam ?)
Or, do we hold on to Sam, delaying the enevitable, until his contract is up and we have no bargaining power, and Sam becoming more and more uneasy and wanting to leave.
I would like to see a descision which benefits the club, but unfortunately we won't know the result until well after which ever deal is done.

There's nothing in the T&A story that's not been on here already.

Still don't quite get why he'd sign a contract then go back on it within months.

Looking at the way Hape was playing in his final year with us there seemed little point in keeping him as he was obviously hankering to leave and not putting in anything like the effort he did beforehand. If we'd have dug our heels in and made him honour his contract we'd have been stuck with a player who was obviously under-performing. If he was unhappy then that mood could be poison in a dressing room.

I have no gripe about any of the players who have left being allowed to leave (apart from Peacock). My gripe is that the players who were brought in as their replacements were almost all of inferior quality.

Nail.

Head.

Unless there had been some major fallout, Sam was happy - obviously after a year to think about it, after full investigations, after full and doubtless extensive enquiries and discussions by his agent, to sign on the dotted line for us. Some people are talking as if it might have been a spur of the moment thing which he regrets, or ignoring the significance of the above.

Also I'd add his brothers (and other players) have joined the club as part of the general 'building for the future' of which same is a major, if not the major, part.

I don't know Sam personally, but given all the circumstances I'd be amazed if he was after reneging on his contract. A deal at the end of his contract, sure - why wouldn't a top young man want to test himself in the NRL, anyone can see that, sad though it would be for us.

Well plenty of fans have decided that the club is going nowhere fast under the current coaching set-up in the last few months, it's not exactly impossible to think that a player might have come to the same conclusion.