Quote: Mark_P1973 "it really is difficult and i wouldnt want to be managing the cap. I have a friend associated with the club, and he told me how many iterations of the cap they went through last year to accomodate changes i.e Dupree in and Singleton out plus the signings for this year
i suppose the good thing in our favour now with the changes to the cap is that you can pay Jack whatever you want and it will only cost £50k cap wise, but clearly the club has to be able to afford anything over and above that. You only need to look at Cunningham, Roby, Scully (i know he signed from Wire), LMS to show that you can have a good career over here and dont have to go over to Oz, especially if he's in a side challenging and equally getting good international exposure (if we can ever get the international calendar right)
i know Stu and think there's another poster who speak highly of some of your academy stars, but is all about timing and getting the balance right, whether that be through good planning or sheer luck. i think Isa may have stopped Junior getting some good game time this year, but bad luck for Isa, and good luck for Junior, has meant he's now getting good game time and looking like he can play at that level week in week out (and i know there is likely to be a dip at some point for him, but we need to manage that). From what i've seen on TV, a couple of your lads are looking ready or close to ready, but its bedding them into a consistent / successful team as you've been able to do over the last few years, and i think that makes a big difference to how they go, especially if your team is playing iwth confidence
onto the 5 year contracts, it is a slightly different approach, but hopefully we'll see the best of the players, whilst managing other recruitment i.e. Cooper, Isa likely to go this year, Farrell probably next year which opens up 1st team spots for Hill, Junior and Walters for example, plus all 3 have had good experience this year. There is no doubt we wont get it right with all our player retention, and we'll still lose some good kids, but we cant keep them all. I know i've posted on the Warriors fans forum and Forber could be an example of this, where O'Neill has stepped up probably ssoner than anticipated, and Leeming gone from starting 9 to bench, so highlighting the risks / challenge as we have him on a 4 year contract, with O'Neill and Forber both chomping at the bit for 1st team'"
I'd be willing to walk over personally but everyone is different. If Welsby is a home bird like O'Loughlin, Roby etc then I won't be complaining.
Agree with the importance of planning and there's been a big debate about it on Redvee. We've heard about this generation of new kids and how good they are for a while now, so I think patience is wearing a bit thin waiting for them to get their chance (Stephens excepted). It's important that they are drip fed into a settled team and with so many players currently injured I can understand why it hasn't happened yet. Maybe London was the opportunity to give Vaughan a run in hindsight, personally I was happy to err on the side of caution and rack up the points difference given they had two weeks off prior and another week off coming up. But when we see the likes of Farrimond and Eckersley fitting in and performing straight away it ramps up the pressure even more and I can understand the criticism.
I still think most are a while off, maybe Vaughan this year and the rest next year, maybe longer still. With all that said, Delaney and Stephens got their chance due to injury and both have took it. Given Wellens' track record with his interchange management maybe they will all only get in due to an injury crisis
