I'm deadly serious. I'd love to keep Sua. I'm not even looking to pay unders for Sua, i want to pay what he is worth, and i feel realistically, for a player who has achieved nothing yet, 150k-200k should be what he is paid. But as i said following that, the market is inflated. so i dont see paying 300-350k for a player who has proved nothing is fair. If he gets better, you upgrade him. I havent once said pay overs for crap and pay unders for quality. Pay them the contracts their performances warrant. You do have a little wiggle room factoring in potential, but you dont throw 500k + a year at blokes who havent done a thing yet.
As for the Opacic thing, he isnt family, there is no love or obsessiveness there, but you would have to be blind to think Bird has outperformed him this year in the centers. One is on probably under 150k a year, the other is on about 750k from reports. There isnt 600k worth of value difference in their performances in the centers. Same with Kahu, he would be on a lot less than Bird, yet wouldnt have performed any worse. You are kidding yourself big time if you think there is.
Also, i think if 4 grand final winning coaches think Tom is good enough, then i'd say he is good enough.