Not at all surprised about Mo. Us Titans fans have known how good he is for years but Origin has put him on the map now. He’ll get 700k+ on his next contract easy. Not sure we can afford it if we have Fifita, Tino and potentially Finucane on big dollars.
Liu is not in the same class as Mo and in 2023 he will be 32. Mo best years are ahead of him as he is only 21
Last edited by Whats Doing; 23-07-21 at 09:25 AM.
Which Mo are we talking about the busted ass one from the first half of the year or the one that is playing currently?
Don’t agree. It is about prioritising your players and then building your team around them. Except for AJ we have gone and upgraded a host of 2nd tier players without first securing your priority players. If we do not have enough cap for Mo then that is the direct fault of recruitment by signing up a string of 2nd tier pkayers and leaving not enough cap space for a priority signing of Mo.
I think Mo stays. Broncos have too much money wrapped up in their cleanout and I can’t see us letting him go. I think a player of his potential as well would be silly not to at least hear out other offers. Tino who knows but I remember when AJ announced his extension someone posted now extend Tino next and he loved it (it’s social media so who gives a **** but it’s all I got).
I think this is a good lesson though our next signings need to be smart. We still need a gun 9, superstar half and an absolute strike back. I’d hate to see us resign a proctor when that money could go towards a Mo
We need second tier players. Not everyone can be paid like Fifita and without the cheaper guys there is no squad. Therefore, extending players like Fogarty does not affect our strategy around marquee players. Each position has its own allocation of the total cap and our recruitment looks for players that fit a number of KPIs (ability, need, personality/culture fit). That's how general workplace recruitment works, it's just that there are extra constraints (salary cap, squad of 30 + development players) that require balancing for a football team.
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I read that Lodge got a huge payout to go to the Warriors, making his effective salary this year $1.5 m. That would mean that the Broncos were well under the cap this year and they were able to frontload him. They have therefore freed up Lodge's salary from 2022 onwards and they may well have earmarked Mo for that position in 2023.
Oh for sure they will have some money to throw but it depends what Mo is looking at. Ash, peachy, proctor, Wallace are all 600k+ contracts coming off (plus a number of middle to low range we won’t pick up). Now obviously we are pretty stacked with forwards so you can only keep what you can keep and as mentioned above we have other huge needs to be addressed but with Mo being a junior and to me a future leader I’m hoping he gets the AJ treatment.
Thing is though you can’t keep them all. Eventually the broncos and other teams are going to take a player we love. That’s the NRL
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Plus I believe broncos are looking at giving Haas a JT 10 x year 1 mil plus a year deal
Let's try to quantify it. I'll use contract values reported in the media, so obviously take it with a grain of salt. Worst case scenario in terms of retaining Mo is that we sign Finucane and re-sign Tino on 700k each. Assuming we don't re-sign Wallace, Ese'Ese, Proctor, or Stone and re-sign Whitbread and Farmer (or equivalent minimum wage depth players), that gives us:
Fifita: 1.2 m
Tino: 700 k
Finucane: 700 k
Liu: 400 k (?)
Lisone: 200 k (?)
Jolliffe: 200 k (?)
McIntyre: 100 k (?)
Fermor: 100 k (?)
Whitbread: 80 k
Farmer: 80 k
That's already 3.76 m, or 39% of the cap, tied up in the forwards with 4 forward spots in the squad needing to be replaced. How much more of that can we afford to allocate to a prop worth 700k+ on the open market? Also consider that if we do get Brandon Smith, it won't be cheap (800k to 1 m), and I'd say he is probably our highest priority recruitment target right now.
Note the numbers here are for 2023 as Mo is already signed to us for 2022. Also note I excluded Peachey from this as he is technically a 'utility' even though he has been playing as a bench forward. Obviously, a lot can change between now and then and the above is based on the assumption that we sign Finucane. I think not signing him is the only way we can realistically keep Mo. Personally, I've been off the Finucane train since we signed Liu as I think they are effectively the same player in terms of the gap they fill in our squad (experience, leadership, middle workhorse). I would rather we prioritise Mo but if you listen to the media it sounds like we're favourites for Finucane.