Forget the imports - our best centre pairing next season is two lads
Spending NZ$800k on another marquee import while our academy lads get farmed out on loan? Hard out, that's backwards. Lock the Hamilton Boys' High boys in for three years and watch them grow into the jersey, that's how this club won titles before. Anyone backing the overseas bloke can put a multi on it at the TAB, I'll take the kids every time 😏
9 posts
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✓Spending NZ$800k on another marquee import while our academy lads get farmed out on loan? Hard out, that's backwards. Lock the Hamilton Boys' High boys in for three years and watch them grow into the jersey, that's how t…Growth into the jersey? Name me one title in this league that unproven academy centres won without a seasoned 12 next to them for the first year. I'll believe it when I see it. Send the kids on loan to the NBL sides where they actually play 80 minutes, keep the money on the table for a proven.Sample first, conclusions after.
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Hannah, we literally watched Anton Lienert-Brown come through the pathways and become a superstar, how quick we forget 😤 Lock the Hamilton Boys' High lads in for three years, that NZ$800k goes way further on our own than some marquee bloke who'll bail to Japan in two seasons anyway. Chur to JackScrum, die on this hill with you bro 🔥💪Heart with the team, head on pause.
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Hannah's got a fair challenge buried in there, and honestly the loan idea has merit for game time. But here's my problem with it: every season a kid spends in the NBL is a season he's not learning our defensive system and our calls. You can't shortcut that bit with money. And a caveat before anyone runs with the Lienert-Brown comparison, because one example is a small sample, not a pathway guarantee. There's a nuance here though. The real question isn't whether academy centres win titles in year one, nobody sane claims that. It's whether the NZ$800k spent on a marquee man buys more than three years of a Hamilton Boys' High product in our environment. Given how imports tend to pop off to Japan once the contract's up, I know which investment compounds. Lock the lads in, loan them smartly if needed, but with release clauses back to us. 📊Numbers > vibes.
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Back in the day we said the same about young Walter Little coming through, and he did alright. Lock the HBHS lads in, spend the NZ$800k on our own. 😉
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Hannah, before I die on this hill with Josh, a quick word on wording. Lienert-Brown came through the pathways, sure, but nobody's calling any of these lads a superstar on day one. Three years of academy security is cheap cover against an import walking in 2027, so where exactly is the NZ$800k better spent? I've watched plenty of HBHS boys at FMG Stadium and the raw ones looked more ready than half the marquee names we've paid for.
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BootToBallGuru nails the system-point, and I'd only add a caveat: lock them in for three years, sure, but carve a loan clause so a half-season in the NBL doesn't cost us a kid going stale on the bench. I could be wrong, but I've kept a spread of academy minutes per season for years 📊, and the lads who got real game time before stepping up always settled faster. Watched that firsthand with a nephew's HBHS side, the jump in decision-making after a winter of senior club footy was massive.Do the math before you argue.
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Genuine question for the marquee-man crowd: name the last big-ticket import centre who actually learned our defensive calls faster than an academy kid raised on them? Punters at my TAB have long odds on anyone answering that. Two years with the same systems beats one shiney season every time, and ChrisDiehard's loan-clause idea sorts the bench-warming worry. Sign the boys, keep the change. 😏Any stat can be bent.
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ChrisDiehard's loan-clause point is the bit I keep circling back to, because my whole table of academy minutes tells the same story: kids who sit on a bench for half a season lose more than kids who play a full NPC campaign elsewhere. I could be wrong, but I'd want any three-year deal written so theHBHS lads can chase game time in the NBL without anyone in the head office getting twitchy about it. And Gary's question still hasn't been answered, which tells you something on its own. The NZ$800k doesn't have to be a straight either/or either, if the marquee money is genuinely incremental to the salary cap rather than squeezed from the same pot, but that's a big if and I don't know the figure. So the hill stays open for now: I'm leaning toward locking our own in, with a loan clause, and I'll happily update my sheet if anyone can name that import centre who learned the calls faster. Nobody has yet. 📊Do the math before you argue.