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Wayne Bennett’s Dolphins have struck a blow on the recruitment front by poaching Panthers young gun Isaiya Katoa and Penrith legend Greg Alexander is fuming over the move.
Katoa, a star of Penrith’s SG Ball Cup side, was announced on Friday by the Dolphins on a three-year deal and is a strong chance of being one of their starting halves when the expansion side comes into the NRL next year.
Happy birthday to our newest Dolphin – Isaiya Katoa turns 18 today and will land at the Dolphins for 2023 ???? pic.twitter.com/cTzfKkmEFs
— Dolphins NRL (@dolphinsnrl) February 17, 2022
The Panthers are furious that they have lost one of their best young prospects and Alexander, who is the club’s deputy chair, believes it it yet another example of why the NRL needs to fix its controversial player transfer system.
“Very disappointing when you lose a player you want to keep, particularly a junior like him,” he said on SEN Radio on Friday morning.
“It doesn’t happen often that you really want to keep a junior and he decides to go somewhere else but that’s what’s happened.
“It has caused some problems within the club. You develop juniors and they get poached.”
Alexander said Katoa, whose older brother Sione has played in the NRL since 2015 for Penrith and Canterbury, has been developed through Penrith’s pathways and “at the moment is playing very well for the Panthers’ SG Ball team”.
“They’ve had a couple of games and he’s been the star of both games.”
The Dolphins have been criticised for targeting veteran players in the twilight of their careers in the early stages of their recruitment drive after signing Kenny and Jesse Bromwich and Felise Kaufusi from the Storm and Rabbitohs prop Mark Nicholls.
Katoa’s acquisition gives their building roster a much-needed injection of youth.
Alexander said apart from a small nominal fee that is paid to the club that develops a player, there is little incentive for development clubs like Penrith in cases like this to invest heavily in a young player only to see them walk to another team.
He said he could understand the business side of it from the Dolphins’ perspective that they wanted to sign the young star and did not blame Katoa for looking elsewhere with Origin duo Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai locked in long term as Penrith’s halves.
But he believes the NRL needs to institute a system where there is a reward for clubs that put time and effort into moulding youth-level players into first-graders but lose them to other teams that don’t develop young talent.
“You are not getting compensated for the money you invest in a player,” he said.
“There is a lot of movement between clubs with junior players. I’m saying that the league should be compensating clubs for developing juniors.”
Panthers CEO Brian Fletcher is set to meet NRL CEO Andrew Abdo to discuss the issue.
Abdo on Thursday said the league was looking at ways to change the player transfer system with clubs at the moment able to sign recruits from other teams more than a full year before they join their new side.
He is negotiating with the RLPA for a new collective bargaining agreement which kicks off next season with the next funding cycle based on the new broadcast rights agreements.
“As we enter that new period from 2023 onwards we have an opportunity to put a new system in place so I think things will be different from next year,” he said.
“What exactly they look like, I can’t tell you just yet.”
There is a strong push for a transfer window or multiple trading periods over the course of each year.
There have already been 16 player switches announced for 2023, affecting 12 club rosters.
The Eels already have five players leaving next year – Isaiah Papali’i (Tigers), and Marata Niukore (Warriors) as well as Stone, Mahoney and Kaufusi and have signed Raiders hooker Josh Hodgson.
Melbourne have lost four stars – Kaufusi and the Bromwich brothers to the Dolphins, and Roosters-bound Kiwi international Brandon Smith (Storm).
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