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
MORE TO COME
Replies
I specifically mentioned player options, I was not talking about mutual options or club options. A player option is an option the player holds.
Everyone understands the option is in the player's favour. That's why it's called a player option. You need to understand why clubs agree to this sort of thing.
What if a PO would've gotten Koloamatangi over the line? What if it had gotten Moses to re-sign for $100k/year less than what he eventually accepted? Clubs don't give these options away for nothing.
Using them to lure a player from another club is one thing but to give them to players already at your club like the eels did with all 7 they had in 2024 is absolutely insane and it hurt our club.
They are not widespread across the league and that's because clubs know there is no benefit to the club and it gives all the power to the player. The eels now have non and we can thank ryles for that. O'Neil is holding this club back.
No, you would only give them to players you know and trust. That's why they are used for player retentions more than new signings.
If there was no benefit to the clubs, they wouldn't be rare, they wouldn't exist. They are offered to players when the club's salary cap is tight and they can't increase the monetary component of their offer. Player options are something the club can give to the player that doesn't count under the cap.
And who are the seven players with supposed POs in 2024? I've been recording this stuff in a thread on LU since 2019 and I'm only tracking five:
Talagi (2025)
Brown, Penisini, Matterson (2026)
Moses (2027)
Only three of them came due in the same year and that was the three for next year. None of them hurt our ability to recruit. What hurt our ability to recruit for 2026 was letting Lomax go during pre-season, and that had nothing to do with player options. He was locked in for another three years and still fucked us around. That's why you should only give POs to players you trust.
Lane was #6 i can't remember who #7 was but there were definitely 7. I read it on an article at the time and all 7 were named.
It didn't hurt our ability to recruit but it did hurt our ability to maintain a roster and keep juniors who thought their path was blocked by players on long term contracts but actually weren't.
If player options were beneficial to clubs they would be rife through the league, the fact they are rare is proof they are not. If you want to believe they are good go ahead.
Let's just forget the fact that Ryles himself said it's MONs job during an interview discussing the acquisition of Joash. And all the usual suspects told us " see MON is the man responsible for the recruiting " . Myself and a few other MON knockers tipped our hats to him for getting that one done.
But when it's a missed target it all of a sudden is because Ryles was playing it smart and realised it wasn't in our best interest to pursue the player .
So when Arthur was here we missed all these players because of BA , and now we are still missing players and BA is gone. Theres only two common denominators and ones job title litterally includes heading up the R&R segment and the others is R&R .
do you realise how misleading it is for you to be quoting facts wiz, between the hyperbole and deep fakes you are hardly a credible person......
Mate I'm angry, we let Lomax go without getting someone we couldn't even get Garrick, Galvin, Keaon to come yet we couldn't keep Pezet for additional years. Yet this recruitment has the balls to say we never offered 4 years. The R&R from BA era had to fuck off completely.
Team is heading in the right direction and our cap space is great heading into 2027. We in a great spot tbh
We are in a good spot in terms of what we offer. That I agree with. All well and good having a state of the art COE, representative Halfback, up and coming coach who many have been impressed with great fan base and stadium, and getting them to the stages of nearly signing them too, so there is interest from players somewhat. But that final hurdle, whatever it is, needs to be investigated and dealt with. Unfortunately the arrows point to MON or Sarantinos or both.
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