Yes sezer and William's would be a halves pairing at another club. I can think of a number of clubs that have worse halves than we currently do. Williams/sezer is also a better combo than Austin/Sezer so we have already upgraded (although only slightly) and saved ourselves 700k in the process. Now that, is good salary cap management.greeneyed wrote: ↑November 6, 2018, 4:42 pmYou might not have read a lot of my posts... but I’m certainly not naive about how footy clubs are run. But tell me... would Aidan Sezer and Sam Williams be a first string halves combination at any other club? Now I keep hearing about the Raiders signing a big name half. But when they are linked to one... the club says... too expensive, can’t fit them in the cap. Despite Paulo, Boyd and Austin leaving. Is the club lying to it’s members? Given recent recruitment and the players shed to comply with the cap, I don’t think so. Remember when the Raiders had to release Fensom and Lee just before the season, just to comply with the cap?JezTez1984 wrote: ↑November 6, 2018, 4:19 pmLike I said earlier, we obviously have money. It is not rocket science. Sorry but you have no clue if you think we have no money after letting Paulo, Boyd and Austin walk.greeneyed wrote: ↑November 6, 2018, 11:17 am I do hate the Sharks... but you've got to give them credit for how they manage their salary cap... salary cap breach investigation aside, of course! But they never upgrade a player early. They wait until a new deal needs to be arranged. They are prepared to let players go who demand too much when the next contract comes. James Maloney won them a premiership, but they refused to upgrade his deal early and were prepared to let him walk. They were prepared to let Bird walk... even if they were upset about it. We seem to be constantly upgrading players, locking them in earlier than need be.
We changed emphasis from being a development club to a club that buys talent, but you need to be ruthless if you're doing the latter. If we genuinely have no money left in the cap... as we're constantly being told... we're clearly not being ruthless enough in our salary cap management. I do like the fact that the club refused to pay Paulo and Boyd any more than they were worth... and it signaled that they don't want to tie up too much money in forwards. But I still for the life of me, cannot understand how we have no money for a top line half (if one were indeed available) having lost Paulo, Boyd and Austin.
You are kidding yourself if you think we are just sitting on our hands watching the world go by and not making any attempts to sign good players.
Which (if any) of our previous signings have been widely reported in the press before they signed???? I think you will find "none" is the answer. They have all basically been announced out of the blue with very little/no press coverage.
Also, in terms of salary cap management... I would much rather we manage the cap as we are clearly currently doing, which is hooking underperforming, overpaid players such as those mentioned and using that money WISELY and waiting for the right target to become available and not wasting the money on a waste of talent like josh **** Dugan who mind you probably signed for close to a million.
Also waiting until players contracts are about to expire is full of flaws. Tell me, would you really want all of your top talent coming onto the open market, this also most likely increasing their asking price (which was the case with Paulo and Boyd).
As if you would want to risk losing players like Tapine, cotric and all of our other stars because you were too blind to re-sign them early.
That is certainly not the definition of good salary cap management, sorry....
Anyway, I do hope there is a little war chest there to sign Shaun Johnson... someone!
One extra point... the Raiders have more than once told us they’re upgrading players early, to reward them for performance. I seem to remember we did that for Blake Austin? How has that worked out?
And lastly, BTW, which team has a premiership in the last few years? And which team doesn’t?
No the club Is not lying to its members, it is lying to the press for strategic reasons.
Do you seriously think we are going to come out and say we are extremely interested in signing this and that player???
When have we ever done that? In what reality is that a good idea??? It potentially sparks a bidding war with other clubs and also would lead player managers to believe we have a war chest and that we can afford to pay massive overs.
Recent recruitment? 2 of the best forwards in the super league? Remember when Lee actually got let go by the club because he was that **** terrible he lost us a semi final, a preliminary final and the chance at a premiership and finally, just before his eventual sacking by the club he allegedly got into a brawl at training with a fellow team mate.
Fensom was released because while he tried his heart out and bled green he was never going to make it to the next level and was consistently average. I have never seen someone have a run and get drilled back 10 meters so often, except for maybe Luke Bateman. Fensom was ineffective and would of been demanding somewhere between 400-500k which is way overs.
Your ideal of a well run club and salary cap seems to be quite disillusioned. Paulo, Boyd, Austin, Lee and fensom are 5 brilliant examples of good salary cap and squad management.
It has worked out brilliantly with blake austin, he provided us with a couple of years of great form and then he left and we saved ourselves 700k. I'd call that a win.
Btw we are talking about the salary cap not premierships.