Ponga is definitely ahead of Taylor in the 'what have they proven' stakes, but Ponga still to me has a lot to do before I view him as proven elite. Proven elite brings to mind Locky, JT, Cam Smith, Cronk, Slater.
Sure Ponga's best is up there with the very best, but to be proven elite and worthy of over a million a season, you need more than incredible talent, you need the ability to produce consistently.
This is all fair and true, but it sort of misses the realities of the NRL player market.
Yes, the very best elite players can command top level deals, but usually those deals are to retain a superstar and only rarely do we see absolute elite players changing clubs. The reason for this is that the cost is simply prohibitive in just about every case.
Even a Lockyer or a Cronk at $1.5 million plus in today's market would be a risky prospect for any club to weigh up. So much invested in one player, even an elite on, is a huge roll of the dice.
So if we want to possess a genuinely elite talent without blowing our cap to pieces, we really only have two options:
1) Grow our own/Recruit them out of school - Payne Haas, David Fifita etc
2) Offer them good money to leave their current club before they really hit the elite level.
The first option is great if you can make it happen, but the second option requires a big leap of faith and we do of course see clubs get burnt by this strategy regularly. That's why if it's a path we choose to go down we need to be extremely discerning in who we offer these sort of deals to.
Whether Ponga is worthy of an offer like this or not is subjective to each person's opinion, but the truth is, if we don't recruit him right now for a big, realistic ($1 million dollar plus) deal now, the only way we're ever going to get him will be when we pay enormous overs (probably $2 million dollars plus) next time he's up for renewal, and that's the point where clubs really do risk paying overs.
It's a gamble, no doubt about it, but success is built on getting these kinds of gambles right and if we never make them, we never get them wrong, but we also never ever get them right either.