Seriously, if I have to read one more thing about the Ricky Stuart “clean out” and how he helped re-build the Eels, I’m going to have a coronary.
There were apparently 12 players, everyone likes to recall that Stuart cleared out. Of those players, three are still at the club - Wille Tonga, Ben Smith and Luke Kelly. Four of those players I think were off-contract and given where our salary cap was, had basically next to no chance of being signed anyway - Nathan Smith, Pat O’Hanlon, Ben Roberts and Matt Keating. Matt Eisenhuth was a second-tier player. That leaves us with four players who could have been classes as being “moved on”. Of those four Daniel Harrison and Matt Ryan were both granted releases AFTER Ricky Stuart left the club; they were actually released by Brad Arthur.
That leaves us with only Cheyse Blair and Reni Maitua who were actually released under Stuart. We’re still paying plenty on those two contracts because instead of just managing them out of the side we had to go and tell the world they were free to go to other clubs; and their players managers and the clubs they went to subsequently screwed us for every cent.
And how did Ricky use that pittance he freed up. Well, he did recruit Justin Hunt on a three-year deal, and he clearly hasn’t been able to find a place in our NRL side either. The only real difference there then is that Blair and Maitua would have been off the books this year, instead of 2016.
The supposed clear-out is a myth. It made no measurable difference to our salary cap, and only really succeeded in assisting Canterbury and Manly to beef out their depth.
Projector-gate was a mis-managed publicity stunt that I believe was architected to try and give the perception that the club was doing something about its underperforming football side. In any other scenario you would have just quietly not signed those blokes that were off-contract and let those you didn’t rate, dwell in reggies until they tired of that and went asking for a release.
The song-and-dance that was made only served to paint this pretense of a hard-arse coach clearing out the deadwood.
Coaches should never talk about “re-building”, it sends a psychological message to your current roster that they’re not good enough, and that they probably don’t have anything to play for because they’re not wanted anymore.
The only one who benefits from a "re-building plan" is the coach, who buys himself some time to try and get some results. Funny, the talk of re-building Canberra only started once the club got itself anchored to the bottom of the table.
Real coaches don’t re-build, they just build. And that my friends, is the difference between Brad Arthur and Ricky Stuart.
Replies
Well put.
I thought Blair and Maitua were off contract this year. What happened there.
Here, here, Phil. Well said mate.....
you think that's strange? Chayse Blair was re-signed at the start of 2013, then told he wasnt wanted by pRicky not even half a season later
Jake was never listed in the 12. My recall is Jake was actually off-contract, signed an extension under Stuart and then got the release when he got the Salford offer. It was a very strange turn of events.
Your last statement is what has turned us around in '14.
I believe BA could have avoided 2 spoons with the same squads RS and SK had.
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