Signing a halfback : Mon Aug 18, 2014 8:51 pm
At various times through the year this issue has come up usually with people saying it was bad planning by the club to fail to plan for Briers' succession.I expect the succession planning was started a few years ago with us signing Myler and Ratchford, and with GO'B coming through the ranks, and being sent on loan so he could play in SL rather than just playing reserves with us. This was the likely plan and I think if you were to go back a few years on here and read what people thought, if a Wigan fan came on saying Wire will be stuffed when Briers leaves, the response would have been along the lines of no we've got Myler, Ratchford and GO'B coming through so we'll be fine.
That hasn't quite worked out although we've had the bonus of Bridge playing well there and him and Ratchford have at times this season been excellent, although we have not had the dominant single pivot player that we had with Briers.
So we basically had/have three options:
- Go for a front line NRL halfback. Some people are sceptical about this because top NRL players don't come to England as much and if we're linked with Thurston or whoever everyone thinks 'why would he come to us'. However you sometimes get a possibility due to particular circumstances: Michael Sullivan with his gambling debts, Joel Monaghan getting sacked by Canberra. Or sometimes when a player is over 30 and only has one year offers in the NRL and a SL club can compete in that market by offering 3 years that give more security.
- Go for a halfback with SL experience that's on the move. Since Briers has retired we've seen Tim Smith and Michael Dobson become available, and also Scott Moore if you count him as a sort of halfback. These players can 'do a job' but they might feel like a downgrade on Briers, especially if we signed them the year after Briers. Possibly Dobson would have been a decent player to get in.
- Don't sign one and work with what we have, give GO'B an extended run and work some combination of Myler, Ratchford and Bridge. This is the lower risk option as the players are already here, know our system and we have been doing it this season and not been doing that badly, at times it has worked well.
My guess is we will probably go with the third option. If anybody has any credible options for option 1 and option 2 it would be good to suggest some possible names.