LeonardCohen
Bencher
Interesting…Depends how you define '1st grade quality'. To me it means a player who is a regular 1st grader.
As for Manly, we are not top tier but are getting closer to that. Maybe not improving as fast as the Bulldogs, but this only highlights the fact that it's all about recruiting (or developing) better players.
Manly has plenty of good players but we need more, simple as that!
I kinda think our roster is better than the Dogs, regardless of who they’ve recruited. It’s just working for them because their coach obviously knows what he is doing and is getting the best out of some average talent, much like Bellamy.
I know they signed Crichton, Mahoney and Kikau but the rest are all pretty run of the mill and were signings many experts were critical of. Compare Tom and DCE to Tracey and Sexton?! We’ve got superior speed on the edges and our own big weapon in Olakau’atu to cancel out Kikau. They’ve got Hughes starting in the front row and Salmon playing a heap of edge. Who are they really? Hughes is fresh on the scene and Salmon was the weak gutted dog that got a game at Penrith when everyone else was injured. Now he’s a regular starter in the forwards, having played most of his junior years in the backs. Neither are established first graders. Then you look at their bench and it’s very thin.
The reason they went and signed so many players is because they turned over the entire squad of 30 players in the space of three years. They had the coin to go to market. We’ve already got our big name equivalents on the roster to begin with, hence our lack of marquee signings.