St George Illawarra have landed a huge recruitment scalp by securing Australian star Keaon Koloamatangi to a long term near $5 million deal.

It is understood that Koloamatangi has told the Dragons he will join the club from 2027 on a five year deal. The contract is now in the cooling off period.

It is a clear circuit breaker for the Dragons who were in the market for a marquee player.

Koloamatangi’s current club South Sydney wanted to secure him as did Parramatta.

The Dragons though look set to land the prized recruit after gazumping the Eels and Rabbitohs with a monster five year deal

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      • Agreed however occasionally you do need to land a big fish. We just lost the NZ 5/8 and the Australian/ NSW Origin winger. Replacing them with fringe first graders. It's admirable to make players better but we do need to have that elite quality if we ever want to seriously compete for a title. There's no best and fairest team award. 

        • There lies the problem, memberships will be up and crowds attendance will be up and that's all the care about. As long as dopes continue to spend their hard earned money on this rubbish why in the world would anything change? For god sake just go get Richardson and be done with it.

          • Yep have said this forever, Parra fans are as dumb as they come!!!!

            • Why are the fan's dumb.....excluding yourself?

              It seemed to me we were resigned to not getting KK and rationalised acordingly, nobody from here was supporting us paying that much for him......

              So we miss out and all of a sudden we are a pack of "gumbies" I think I know who the gumbies are!

              How can you possibly blame R&R for that......sometimes when you lose by the toss of a coin, it can be a good toss to lose. Back into your straight jacket GM, the asylum is now closed for the silly season.

              • This deal needed to get done even if they matched the Dragons, sometimes it more important how it looks.

              • He's worth a million in today's market considering he's just hitting his prime years now and the deal starts in 2027 so you need to fast forward another year to evaluate the price tag.  The way players salaries are rising , it's not stupid money for him , not even close.  The bears will jack up asking prices yet again in this term. 

                 

                If a dope like Mattersons on 700k , this would've been a steal at 1 mil. The cold hard truth is we couldn't have landed him even if we offered 1.1 million.  The Dragons whilst flip flopping , are still a far superior option to Parramatta for a player.  Moses goes down , we are a hot favourite wooden spoon team.  

                And they have a location that any player or more importantly , players wife , would choose anyday over Parramatta.  Until we can make ourselves so attractive players can ignore the location , we will get trumped time and time again. We have dopes on our board and our head of footballs our very own Roy Munsen. 

                • Some news Parra actually offered 1.2mill for 4yrs, if that's the case and we still missed out, then this is a massive fcukup.

                  • Dragons got him for $5.5mil over 5 years.

                    • That's fckn crazy coin.  

                    • Yep, I disagree with some of the R&R strategies floated on here. He’s a good player, but $5.5m over five years for optics? Better to cop poo-bombing meltdowns than run an irresponsible club. Rabbits & Chooks would probably agree.

                      Hopefully, it pays off for the Saints. Big names like Tino and Fifita on big coin, and arguably better players, haven't done much for the Titans who struggle to get out of the bottom four. Last four years: 13th, 13th, 14th, 14th, 16th. That's regression. More to winning?

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