Player movements and rumours

Not sure about that. At 24yrs of age and after 5 years in first grade I think a player should have the right to move clubs freely without opposition clubs being put off by a compensation fee. I think there should be favourable conditions put in place in favour of the club trying to retain the player, in this case the Tigers such as a salary cap discount and right to final offer.

But it's the 17-21yr old kids who are being poached before they've even been given a chance at the club who developed them that really needs to stop IMO.

 

Staines is a 19yr old kid, suggesting that Penrith should be rushed into giving him the fullback position or lose him is ridiculous. Given the investment they have put into him they deserve the right to be given time to blood him into their top grade squad or at the least be compensated for the investment they put in to him.

Penrith shouldn’t be punished for having a strong first grade side & the Bulldogs rewarded because they have completely fucked their roster and are now willing to start a new project where they can poach a top end kid from another clubs youth system.

I’m don’t completely disagree with your stance on Tedesco, I just don’t see compensation for senior players ever being feasible given how little money is really in the game. A compensation system on Under 21 players as a disincentive for clubs to go on poaching raids of talented youth players would only reward & protect clubs who invest in their pathways and junior development.

 

Staines doesn’t have to stay, if Penrith didn’t want to keep him or hold him back then he could go freely, they could loan him out to a club who was in desperate need or the club who wanted him so bad could pay say a flat 200k compensation fee (pulling a number out of my ass) for any junior who had come through the junior rep grades at that club.

I don’t really care if Penrith have two of the top 16 fullbacks in the game, if they’re providing more to the game through development and investment in pathways than other clubs then good luck to the them. The game should be incentivising that kind of player development not rewarding other clubs benefiting from it. It’s why I detest the thought of a draft, unless the game wants to centralise and pay for player development.

I don’t agree, Tedesco decided he was going to leave because he wanted to progress his career and he didn’t see that happening at the Tigers. That’s more of a reflection on the Tigers as a club than a club with plenty of cash to spend coming over the top and just blowing the Tigers out of the water.

I think in this instance the Tigers should have been given an advantage in negotiations with a salary cap discount for a player with 5+ years service & meeting the requirements of being a junior. However I don’t think moving on from the Tigers was all about money for Tedesco and he probably would have left anyway.

 

Discounts solve a different problem to the one I’m speaking about, I think they’re a good option for a different reason but it would take a number of years to introduce. You can’t just give clubs stacked with juniors another 2m worth of salary cap space, clubs have already shown the current salary cap is more than they can afford.

A compensation fee is something that could be easily implemented tomorrow.

 

Let's just wait and see how quickly that NRL integrity investigation comes to an end..

May have been a cost saving in the long run.

 

Tigers need a huge culture shift at the club, reports coming out of the club that the players called and intervention with their coach to talk about feeling like they are stepping on egg shells because they can be dropped at any given moment speaks to a playing group that's had far too much say for far too long.

That's not to dismiss the value of job security and trust at work but he's not sacking people from their employment, just temporarily from their role in hopefully and effort to further develop them.