The Past
As you know I've been stating here for many years we need bigger forwards, and copping plenty of grief over it, from many on this site. Now most on here are beginning to state the same. BA has been as disillusional as many of the supporters on here. Our coming 4th last year just papered over the cracks that had been evident for many years.
For this year BA had rose coloured glasses on and over estimated our forwards and under-estimated the loss of Semi. There was a plethora of good props available and we bought 2 poor ones. He went cheap and bought Evans and Williams, now if they come good I'll be pleased, but I was unimpressed as was a few others with their recruitment. Now finally the penny has dropped for BA and apparently there is a mad scramble to sign a lightweight prop from SL. More of the bad from me, we need size and quality. We need power middle forwards but currently are heavily stacked with back rowers where most of our go forward comes from (along with Semi).
The Future
What I can tell you is that some of our players must be overpaid as we don't have much left in the cap. To be honest there are not too many quality players in our squad. At the end of this year we need a good cleanout and an honest assessment of the worth of the players we retain. If they don't accept our offers they can go elsewhere. We also need to stop signing ageing players to over-inflated long term contracts past their use by date.
We need to start promoting from within and give those we've spent plenty on hope for their future. BA needs to open the cheque book and buy quality not quantity from outside to fill the holes. He also needs to be proactive and not reactive in his assessment of the team he picks and drop non performing players rather than persisting for too long.
Finally BA needs to look after his future. If he fails this year, and I've already stated before the season started that we'll over-achieve if we make the 8 this year, I'm sure the board will put him on notice. So next year he'll have to succeed otherwise I see him out the door.
Replies
Like i said before, if you only rely on recruiting you most often buy bums - other teams rejects , that's unless you pay big overs therefore you're in the shit anyway.
BA is the bum of player development as has always been the case. Not one developed debutant since French in round one 2016 - what a disgraceful effort.
Look at how many Bellamy has provided since 2016, i would say about 6 or 7 top line players, and coming from a state which has no jnrs in Melbourne.
Absolute garbage Chief.
The reason we Plow mllions into junior devolpment is the chance to bring cheap young talent into the side.
Look at Melbourne the last 2 or 3 years Munster, Scott, Vunavaloooooooo, Kaufusi, Croft the list goes on.
yeah they have lost players but they have a ready made production line of talent ready to replace them.
instead we lose any talented juniors we have and would prefer to play moneyball and pay overs for washed up bums.
no wonder young blokes stagnate and don’t kick on here they know they are no chance to get a decent crack.
Yes fair point Glenn; we will have to see how the year pans out.
Chief, also Melbourne have two feeder teams from my understanding (tigers and Sunshine Coast) where they stockpile their players. Therefore they get most of their stock from QLD which is common.
Sorry was that to me Chief? re French. He as north coast wasn't he?
Yes same as any club Chief.
Melb have to rely on QLD as they have no juniors except for the token one or two. I am not slashing my wrists at this point mate, and will see where we are by about rd 10.
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