Re: Briers : Sun Sep 30, 2012 10:44 pm
Sadly I think the quality of SL is going to decline a bit, as there won't be the same quality Aussies coming over given the increase in their salary cap and the strength of the Aussie dollar due to Australia's position as a main exporter of raw materials to the developing countries in asia which will carry on for the next few years. So there will be fewer quality players and there will be more of a premium on who has got better young players coming through their youth system.
I know this is the point where fans of clubs like Saints, Wigan and Leeds usually start lecturing Warrington on how we only ever sign old past its and we have neglected junior development yadayada but we just won the U20s Grand Final yesterday so the signs are we can at least hold our own now.
I think there will be a vacuum in power at the top in 2013-15 where Saints can make their move if they have good recruitment under Nathan Brown. Warrington will lose 4 of our key players, Briers, Hodgson, Michael Monaghan and Morley around the same time and they will be hard to replace. Wigan have got lots of young talent but are also a bit fragile for me, outside of Sam Tomkins I think they are limited and they are signing some worryingly average players, so they may be having a dip. And Leeds are going to be in a similar position to us losing a lot of big guns at the same time. I don't expect these three clubs to fall off like Bradford but they will go through a stage like Saints have since about 2009, losing a lot of players and not being quite what they were.
Saints could be a good bet to move into pole position then, even Hull if they have some good recruitment could be back in the mix.
It's hard to look beyond that in terms of time horizons as you don't know what will happen and what young players will come through the ranks. But I don't reckon there will be long dynasties of success, it will be the bigger richer clubs that have the best infrastructure, finances and youth development (ie Saints, Leeds, Wire, Wigan and Hull) that will be probably sharing out the trophies over the next decade.
