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If you’re a struggling team in the NRL, there are a two main ways to make yourself better via recruitment: you can buy talent or you can grow it.
The main differentiator in both of these is time: either a club can pay more in the hope that better players will join them now, raising the level of the team, or they can invest in pathways and lose for a bit longer in the hope that eventually you will have a crop of home-grown talent that will help you win in the future.
Canterbury, for a fair whack of 2023, seemed very much to be in the second camp. Though they did get a few marquee signings, they clearly bought for the future and adopted a long-term approach.
The combination of Phil Gould, the man who grew Penrith’s junior base into the very best in the NRL, with Cameron Ciraldo, a coach on a five-year contract with a remit to begin a project, seemed perfect for a considered, future-minded rebuild.
Yet in recent weeks, the policy seems to have done a total about-face: Liam Knight joined this week from Souths with Blake Taaffe likely to make the journey in the off-season, while Jaeman Salmon, Siasiua Taukieaho and Connor Watson are all heavily linked with joining for 2024.
They’ve also let local junior Jake Averillo, one of their best players in a poor season, sign with the Dolphins while another area product, Paul Alamoti, just 19 and a standout through all the grade, looks likely to walk with the Cowboys rumoured to be circling.
It’s worth remembering the journey that the Dogs have been on. They began the year with two local juniors debuting in their starting 17 – Alamoti and Jacob Preston – plus another debutant, Jayden Tanner.
Since then, the side have given chances to Khaled Rajab, Karl Oloapu, Ethan Quai-Ward, Jeral Skelton, Dec Casey, Sam Hughes, Kurtis Morrin and Harrison Edwards, who all began the year under the threshold to be eligible for the NRL’s Rookie of the Year Award.
By Round 22, they have now fielded 34 players in the NRL – assisted by a major injury crisis that kicked in April and May – with over half of those being 23 or under.
While the season has largely not gone as planned, it’s worth remembering that fans – even those as long suffering as the Bulldogs – tend to be more forgiving when they can see talent emerging and pathways working.
If you are winning now, or looking like you might win in the future, then the supporters will generally be onside with the project, as was argued in these pages back in June.
The signing policy at Belmore seemed to match this: guys like Alamoti and Preston had been given their chances in first grade, as had those killing it at NSW Cup – where, until recently, Canterbury were top of the ladder – such as Rajab, Skelton and Wilson.
(Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
The issue with youngsters is that it takes them time to get up to NRL standard – especially those, like Oloapu, who have vaulted from junior footy to first grade while barely touching reserve grade on the way through.
That is magnified in the halves, as with Oloapu and Rajab, and in a struggling team, which applies to all of them.
But having burned a season in getting these guys into grade, it seems like an element of panic has set in.
The recruitment policy of star guys augmented by some of the game’s most promising youngster had legs, especially when those rookies were learning on the job.
The staged signings of Matt Burton and Josh Addo-Carr for 2022, then Reed Mahoney and Viliame Kikau for 2023, then Stephen Crichton for 2024 seemed perfect – not to mention grabbing Toby Sexton, who did the tough start at the Titans before arriving in Belmore.
Similarly, the worst contracts in the organisation – Luke Thompson, Tevita Pangai junior, Corey Allen and Kyle Flanagan – could be let to go with their cash reinvested in tying down the best talent.
One does wonder, then, where that plan has gone. Of the signings announced, none fit the business model.
Blake Taaffe could potentially be a game-breaker, but Canterbury already have a slated number one fullback in Crichton and and an elite five eighth in Burton, plus a back-up 1 in Hayze Perham, a young player who covers 1 and 6 in Rajab, and another 6 in Oloapu.
Just like at Souths, one wonders where Taaffe gets a game unless one of the three kids they’ve put time into in 2023 drops out.
Liam Knight might add some value to the back-row, but has bounced between NSW Cup and NRL for almost his entire career so far, with only two seasons as a regular in the top grade, in 2019 and 2020.
At 28, he goes in with Kikau and Preston, while also blocking a path for Jackson Topine Edwards, Morrin and Hughes, who are all much younger. Were Knight a massive upgrade on, say, Chris Patolo or Corey Waddel, that might work, but that jury is very much still out.
Watson and Salmon are in a similar boat. It’s not that they don’t have quality, but both represent punts on who have never had to be in change, but are also not young enough to be prospects.
Both have great utility value, but double up on positions that are already not weaknesses.
Watson could figure as a bench 14 with the capability to relieve Mahoney, but it’s hard to see Salmon being better in the back-row or the halves than any of the current incumbents, while also not being younger.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Taukieaho is the one that makes some sense, as he could do a stopgap for Pangai’s money until a better big man comes on the market – Payne Haas, if you believe the papers – but again, it hardly smacks of looking to the future.
What the current plan looks like is an attempt to hoover up available talent in the hope that it will mask the deficiencies of young players, when in fact, what it might do is smother any ability of those young players to get the game time to blossom into what they could become.
This way, remember, lies madness. The Tigers, Titans and Dragons have destroyed their salary caps and forced themselves into rebuilds as a result of picking up bottom eight quality players while not trusting the talent that they have.
The Panthers, on the other hand – and with eternal credit to Gould – resisted the urge to win now at all costs by building a system around the kids that they knew were coming.
That system, allied with coach Ivan Cleary and assisted by Ciraldo, saw the Panthers finish outside the top eight for five of the eight years Gould was there, before turning into the dynasty we see today.
At the time, he was ridiculed for his ‘five year plan’ that never came to fruition. Suffice to say, nobody ridicules him now.
It’s worth Gus remembering that now. At Canterbury, he has the same set-up, with a huge leagues club funding model and one of the game’s best junior nurseries to pick from, which were likely huge factors in his decision to join on at Belmore.
But without the final part of the jigsaw, in which the players actually got into first grade and were given chance to fail there, the Panthers would never have taken the next step.
At a time when the Dogs seem to be deviating from the plan, that should be front of mind.