I hear all this complaining right now regarding Anderson heading to the Warriors, but the funny thing is that last year many people didn't even want him to come and were questioning why we would sign him at all.
Because it isn’t just losing Anderson in isolation. You don’t think 12 months is a long time in rugby league?
If it was just Anderson, fine but we’ve also lost Arthars (he’s massively regressed but still needs to be replaced), Anderson and now likely Shibasaki. Mariner is no guarantee to come back as good as he was either.
So suddenly we have no depth in the backs and it’s already showing. Next year it’s going to be worse and all we’ve done is sign an old man who could hit the wall at any time. Our two kids we’ve exposed this year don’t look even close to being ready.
As things stand, gone Shibasaki is likely gone, Anderson suddenly became a very likely first team player next year.
This is compounded by re-signing a very past it looking Bunt, extending a very bust looking Piki for two years on top of three really poor looking recruitments in Talty, Gosiewski and Tawful.
Meanwhile we have Mariner, Willison, Jiki and Piakura all unsigned and about to hit free agency. All this on top of our entire forward pack signing with Souths.
It isn’t surprising people on here are questioning our willingness to let a solid first grader walk. We need to be more ruthless, he didn’t seem like he was agitating for a release and given he was already locked up next year, how did he even become gettable before October 31?