not to mention the tawdry attempt to deflect the issues by claiming cap miss-management.
You are entitled to your opinion like anyone else but I can’t see how we are deflecting issues by claiming cap mismanagement.
The fact is though, good salary cap management can be the difference between having a successful year of a bad year and plays a significant part. I have feared over the last 12 months we would find ourselves in a situation like the one where we are in.
It’s not hard to work out that when you are having to upgrade some of the most promising forwards in the clubs history to keep the vultures from swooping, throw in 3 highly paid club veterans who are not playing close to their current contract value (Boyd, Macca, Gillett) throw in a $700,000 marquee centre signing who we can’t keep on the field, a million dollar rocks and diamond half who is now being used to fill in for a job at 1 that our $700,000+ current fullback is incapable of doing, and you’d have to have your head buried in the sand if you didn’t think this was coming.
Whilst hindsight is a wonderful thing, if it wasn’t for injuries, there aren’t many on here who would disagree with the players we have let go so far to try and balance our salary cap moving forward. Wayne Bennett’s biggest strength is he is an effort coach and he can get players to play above their market value as well as get players to take less to play under him which is probably why we have not run into the problems salary cap wise we are facing now. We do not have Wayne anymore and as a fan base we have to accept that and build a new foundation and give the next regime a chance.
Seibold has done some good things this year as well as some bad and frustrating things but he has walked into a bit of a hornets nest. Just because Joey predicted us to win the comp doesn’t mean it’s gospel. Joey doesn’t know the ins and outs of the club and all he did was what most pundits do, make predictions based on paper with little to no after thought. It was also a prediction based on the dreaded p word ‘potential’
We have underachieved this year there is no arguing with that, but if you think for one second we would have been comfortably in top 4 at this point in time just by having Wayne still here, then your opinion is agenda driven. We were never going to be in the top echelon of teams with a spine of Boyd, Milford, Nikorima and McCullough, not to mention having to shed some players mid season with a view on the future. We got a lot of value out of guys like Lodge and TPJ whilst under Wayne, but now they are established big name players with big clubs circling so their contract value has probably more than doubled so that in itself poses salary cap issues moving forward. If Wayne was still here we would have this same problem now.
All things considered, as long as we show improvement in the run home or prove he is moving the club forward, Seibold at least deserves next year to prove if he is up to the job or not. He will have next to no excuses next season and will know what he has to work with and will have hopefully a full uninterrupted pre season.
By all means, slag Seibold off and criticise him when he gets it wrong, but drop the Wayne agenda and stop pretending everything would have been rosy this year under him. We may have a had a couple more wins under him based purely through effort performances if he was still here but that’s about it. We are all as disappointed as you are about under achieving this season so far as a whole but let’s keep everything in perspective. At least under Seibold we have shown a willingness for change and attempting to get rid of some deadwood.
