Entering the 2015 NRL season, the St George Illawarra Dragons were the laughing stock of the league. While clubs such as Parramatta appeared to be in the midst of a promising rebuild, with veteran recruits expected to propel the Eels into the top 8, the Dragons were seen as a club in decline.

Star players were leaving, others were in the midst of contract disputes and a poor recruitment period led many to believe that the Dragons would contend for the wooden spoon in season 2015.

After two and a half matches, the wooden spoon looked even more likely, with the Dragons losing to the Storm and Tigers in uninspiring fashion and then trailing 18-0 after 20 minutes in Round 3 against Canberra.

At this point the fans were on the verge of a revolt, with the hashtag #SaveOurSaints trending and the Oust Doust chants growing ever louder.

Fans wanted answers and they wanted them immediately. The media coverage was intense, surrounding both the team’s performance on the field and the performance of the board. Some of the criticism was justified, some of it was not.

If there was anything that would prevent a full-blown riot from occurring, it was results on the field. Thankfully for Doust the Canberra game sparked something inside the Dragons and they have not looked the same ever since.

Their only losses came in Round 9 against the Rabbitohs, a match that the Dragons probably should have won, and last Monday to the Bulldogs.

The Dragons’ rebuild has been based on a very American-style way of thinking, a style that Phil Gould has implemented in Penrith and is the key to success in the NFL. Like the NFL, the NRL has a strictly enforced salary cap that ensures parity throughout the competition.

Without sound management of a team’s roster, it is very difficult to have a period of sustained success and the Dragons learnt that the hard way when Wayne Bennett left the club after the 2011 season.

This is the lesson the Sea Eagles are currently learning.

As a result of the parity in the NRL, recruitment managers, head coaches and chief executives, must be willing to think with their head rather than with their heart.

It is hard, the backlash from fans when a club stalwart is shown the door can be severe, even if the club is in a better place because of it. But on the flipside, the house of cards that thinking with the heart is built on will eventually collapse and the backlash to that can be just as severe and lead to a period of poor performance on the field.

Again, Manly is a perfect example of this.

The Dragons have made a number of smart, but difficult recruitment decisions in the past couple of years, the highest profile example being Brett Morris. Morris was on a contract worth $450,000 a year at the Dragons when the Bulldogs offered him $600,000 a year and the opportunity to play fullback and reunite with his brother.

Paying a winger $450,000 a year is obscene in the NRL when you can get an up and coming 21 or 22 year old on $100,000 to do almost as good a job. Paying him $600,000 is absolute madness and well above market value for a winger.

Had the Dragons matched the Bulldogs’ offer, Morris would have been paid more than Gareth Widdop. Hopefully that explains why the Dragons had to let him go.

It’s akin to paying Tom Felton more to play Draco Malfoy than Daniel Radcliffe to play Harry Potter. It may have hurt, but it was the right decision to let Morris go.

Contributing to the decision to let Morris go was the fact that St. George signed a fullback to a four-year, $2,800,000 contract just a year earlier. That man is Josh Dugan and he is currently the best fullback in the state. Barring an injury, Morris would not have been playing fullback for the Dragons this year.

By letting Morris go, the Dragons freed up $450,000 a year that they could use to sign a replacement, Eto Nabuli, and two or three other players, such as Heath L’Estrange and George Rose.

This is the same reason why the Dragons should let Jason Nightingale leave if he is unwilling to take a pay cut. He’s a club legend and good player, but the Dragons simply can’t afford him at his current contract, that money is needed to pay other players.

Speaking of club legends, I certainly hope that Ben Creagh’s new one-year contract is not expensive. In saying that, the fact that it’s only one year works in the Dragons’ favour. If the contract is very expensive and Creagh doesn’t live up to the contract’s value, St. George Illawarra won’t be hamstrung for too long.

They will simply be able to move on at the end of next season.

The Dragons are paying a number of athletes fairly hefty contracts and these players have not disappointed this season thus far. Widdop, Dugan and Benji Marshall – who is on around $450,000 a year – have starred for the Dragons.

Joel Thompson, earning $400,000 a year, has provided plenty of grunt up front and really added punch up the middle.

The signing of these players were all major risks, risks that are starting to pay off. Widdop was a star at Melbourne but the list of ex-Storm players who have struggled at their new club reads longer than the opening credits to Game of Thrones.

There was every possibility that he would struggle in the ‘Gong, but he hasn’t. I shouldn’t have to explain the risks associated with Dugan but it is fairly safe to say that he has repaid St George Illawarra’s faith in him.

Marshall was signed on the back of a disastrous holiday to Auckland and three years of poor performances for the Tigers. After his first game for the Dragons against the Eels last year, in which his performance was so bad the crowd chanted his name, it looked as though the Dragons had wasted a lot of money on Marshall.

But he has since improved, with his combination with Widdop particularly special.

The other aspect of the rebuild has been the performances they are getting from the supporting cast. The supporting cast are players on low-value contracts can easily be replaced and often move between clubs fairly regularly or youngsters who have not yet reached their potential starting to develop into key players.

While they don’t get much recognition from fans and the media, they are the lifeblood of any club and every club who challenges for a premiership has significant input from these players.

The key for clubs is to ensure that these replacement level players are able to perform above their value.

The smart clubs are able to continually sign and develop replacement level players who are able to perform above their value. On top of this, the good clubs know which players to re-sign and which players to let go. It is unlikely that a 30-year-old prop forward will be able to suddenly move from an average player to a better player and sustain this improvement for more than one or two years.

The good clubs recognise this, while the bad clubs see a player in form and worth signing. A player that typifies this situation is Kade Snowden, a good player who was paid money to be great after one great season and failed to live up to the value of his $400,000-a-year contract at the Knights.

Perhaps an even better example is Ben Barba, who is being paid $800,000 a year based on one season of dominant performances. And if we’re being honest, he caught fire for about 10 weeks at the back end of 2012 and he was unstoppable because teams were unaware that Barba thrives in against jagged defensive lines.

Give him the ball in broken play and he is deadly. Have a structured, set defensive line and he struggles. Signing Barba on such a large contract was absolute madness and the sooner teams realise that Barba’s market value is lucky to be $400,000 a year the better.

This is why Melbourne has been so successful in recent years, they haven’t chased down players who they don’t think will live up to the value of their contract while they have hunted those who they can mould into players outplaying their contract.

The Dragons have succeeded by managing to get above-replacement value performances from their replacement value players. Players such as Leeson Ah Mau, Mike Cooper, Heath L’Estrange and Tyson Frizell. They have been at the clubs for varying lengths of time but are currently not on large contracts, with Cooper’s probably being the largest.

The L’Estrange signing was heavily ridiculed when it was first announced, he was perceived, unfairly, as Brett Morris’ replacement. He was never going to replace Morris, they play completely different positions, his role was to supplement existing hooker Mitch Rein. He has far exceeded all expectations, even those from within the club, and has turned out to be one of the best value signings of the year.

For those players that the Dragons re-signed I certainly hope that they didn’t overpay them based on a ten-week sample size. It should be expected that many of these ‘average’ players who are currently playing up to the level of a ‘good’ player will return to their ‘average’ levels next year.

A player like Will Matthews, who debuted for the Gold Coast back in 2008, is now 27 and performing far better than he previously has for the Titans or the Dragons. His one-year contract expires at the end of this season and his value is likely to have increased significantly based on his play so far this season.

But it is also reasonable to expect his performance to regress towards his historical averages. The Dragons have revealed that Matthews has received a contract offer for 2016 and beyond, if the Dragons overpay him based on one outlier, the current season, they will probably find themselves in another salary cap hole.

There is one common factor linking the highly paid players living up to their values and the lesser known players playing above their value. That is coach Paul McGregor.

McGregor has led this side with aplomb, a side that is not entirely different than the one that started last season so poorly that their coach was sacked.

McGregor has instilled confidence in his side and ensured that those replacement-level players are able to do what any player can do, defend, every single week.

Whereas the weaker teams see replacement level players show up once every couple of weeks, McGregor has ensured that these players show up and are ready to tackle every single game. The good coaches are those who are able to develop systems that ensure all players are able to perform above levels that they have previously played at. McGregor has managed to do this.

The St George Illawarra Dragons are one of the most interesting clubs in the NRL. Steeped full of history, their fans, do not like losing. The breaking of a 39-year Premiership drought in 2010 was supposed to be the start of a new era of success and dominance for the club.

Instead it was the trigger for an epic collapse of the sort that Dragons fans would look down upon when it happened to other teams. Season 2015 looked to be more of the same for the Dragons, a year of struggles with poor recruitment resulting in the Red V fighting to avoid the wooden spoon.

Instead coach Mary has led his lambs towards the top of the NRL table and elevated their performance to levels no one, not even the most diehard of fans, believed they could achieve.

Will they win the premiership this year? No. Can McGregor lead this side to a Premiership in the next few years?

It is certainly a possibility.