Yep. Those saying $700k is too much - the fact is there aren't many quality halves in the game at the moment. If you've got one in your system that you think you can work with, then you lock him in imo.Rickmando wrote: ↑April 8, 2024, 8:11 am You only have to look at halves we have had over the past 20 years - Ethan Strange 5 games into his career has the potential to be better than all of them. He doesn’t seem to have any glaring weak points to his game.
Let’s go all-in on him. If we don’t, someone else will…
Or we wait until after November when he can negotiate on the market, and if he continues on his upwards trajectory we might be looking at forking out more to keep him. Titans, Dragons, possibly Souths and Cowboys will be looking at halves come November.
It's not a wild figure under the new cap to pay for a half. If he develops into a rep quality 6 or even close to, then $700k is looking like big unders in 2028. Worth noting that Latu Fainu was paid $500k a year to go to Tigers with zero NRL experience, Sullivan I think was at least $600k/year and he's pretty ordinary, Katoa re-signed for $650k/year recently. If the reported figures for Strange are accurate we're paying slight overs on the going rate for talented young halves.