Right, lads, time we dream big
Word round Eden Park is a certain All Blacks midfield bloke might be off-contract come next season, and I reckon if the Blues don't move heaven and earth for him we deserve every wooden-spoon joke thrown at us. Word is around NZ$800k a season to get it done, which sounds steep till you remember what we've been serving up in the midfield for the last few years.
But and in reality? This is the club that watched half its premiership core wander off while the board dithered. Bet my TAB slip on us actually landing him and you'd get odds longer than our injury list. 😂 So lads, who's your dream man at centre, or are we all just doing this bit every winter then crying in round five? 🤡💸
14 posts
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✓I'll believe the off-contract whisper when someone actually names the bloke. "Word around Eden Park" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, last time that phrase was going round, we were apparently signing a returning NPC star and a Japanese-based flanker, and neither happened. Show me the numbers: who, contract expiry date, and who's paying NZ$800k out of what cap space. Sounds good on paper, but if he were genuinely loose next season, the Chiefs and every French club with a chequebook would already be circling, and we'd have heard it from a journalist, not a forum rumour. Might be right. On condition that someone actually produces a source. Until then I'm filing it with the wooden-spoon jokes.Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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Nah who cares if the whisper's vague, imagine him in blue alongside our flyers 😱🔥 NZ$800k? pay it, he'd fix our midfield in one signing and make our juniors ten times better just training against him 💪 I'd put a TAB multi on it happening before we let another province pinch him 🙌In the stands since I was a kid.
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Plenty of ifs in that rumour, and 800k for a mid-thirties centre is poor value — his age profile says the ceiling's lower than we're dreaming. Small sample though, wait till the contract news is real.Numbers > vibes.
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BadBeatKing's got it right - 800k on an unverified whisper is punters' logic, not recruitment. I sat through the last mid-thirties marquee era at Eden Park, no thanks.
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Coaching the juniors here, I'd frame it this way: one class midfield lifting our young fellas at training is worth more than any salary line 😱🔥 pay the NZ$800k, worry later 💪Heart with the team, head on pause.
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I could be wrong, but I keep a table of every midfield signing over the last decade and the hit rate for 30-plus recruits is brutal. Maybe one in four repays the salary line. Here's the nuance: an 800k punt isn't just a wage, it eats a chunk of the cap that could cover two honest journeymen and a development contract. Retro_Faithful's memory of the last marquee era is the sample size that matters most to me. That said, JoshDiehard has a point about training effect, and I won't pretend a class centre wouldn't lift the young fellas. My question for the dreamers though: which actual All Blacks midfielder is off-contract? Nobody in this thread has named him. Until someone does, we're arguing over a ghost, and I'd rather dream about our own kids coming through. 📊Do the math before you argue.
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chris, your table's got more holes than an old pair of footy boots 😄 the same doomsaying greeted SBW when he came back mid-thirties and he lifted every young fella around him at training - some things don't show up in a spreadsheet. seen worse gambles than NZ$800k on a class midfield, believe me. back in the day we paid top dollar for experience and it won us nights at Eden Park the juniors never saw.
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FrontRow's onto something, watched the SBW-era sessions from the fence and the kids copied everything he did. You can't spreadsheet that. Chris, remind me of your ROI on these hot takes? 😏Show me your ROI first 😏
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FrontRow's got a point on SBW, though the sample size is one bloke. Seen plenty of "leadership" signings up here in Rotorua fizzle by round five. Show me his knees are sound first.
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FrontRow's got a point on SBW, though the sample size is one bloke. Seen plenty of "leadership" signings up here in Rotorua fizzle by round five. Show me his knees are sound first.@OffsideKing_Gate knees are the whole deal ay, one dodgy cartilage and he's a $50k meme 🤣 though my knees crack getting off the couch so who am I to judgeMemes are analysis too.
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seen this movie before, lads, remember the big rumour a few years back that had half the pub convinced he was headed to Eden Park, right up until the day he re-signed down south? i've watched enough of these off-contract sagas since the amateur days to know paper talk travels faster than a winger on the break 😄 time will tell, and if his knees are sound like offside says, i'd still rather punt nz$800k on class than on another maybe.Seen it all, lads.
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chris, your table's got more holes than an old pair of footy boots 😄 the same doomsaying greeted SBW when he came back mid-thirties and he lifted every young fella around him at training - some things don't show up in a …@FrontRow88 new here so go easy on me 😅 but that SBW stuff makes sense to me, some things you just can't put in a table right? 🙏
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tbh you just know, man, SBW is everything. You can't put heart in a spreadsheet like that, cuz. 😤💙In the stands since I was a kid.