Surely a coach worth his considered value, would be at this stage saying 'the season is finished for us. Lets start planning for next year with the players we will have with us and need the experience'. My understanding is that John Wright is going and I think Matt Wright is finishing his contract. Uate is out the door. Hodkinson is at best a stop gap. Croker will probably not be resigned. Brown and some other forwards are heading out. So what have we got left we can develop in first grade with an eye on '19. Its regrettable we have a bunch of reserve graders occupying the 30 because it would have been wiser to have Anderson, Cust, Fainu etc available this year as replacements. They may have failed but at least we would know their worth by now. But as we don't have that, so what do we have. Taupau, AFB, Api, Jake are the basis of a good forward pack. Thompson is improving. Lane and Sirro look good potential as long as we can keep Sirro on the field. There are couple of others worth holding onto but we need another tough forward. In the backs we have DCE, TT, Walker, Kelly, Taufua. Then there's Suli who will develop, Parker, who I think would be better in the forwards or in Brown's role and Funa and Tom Wright.
OK if we know who will be here next year, lets stop promoting those who wont and use the ones who will. Forget Matt and Johnno Wright. Forget Brown. Forget Uate. Invest in the '19 season by giving the players who will be here, lots of game time this year. Sure use Walker as 5/8 now that he seems to understand his role there. Use Tom Wright in the centre or wing and leave him there. Use Hodko only for emergencies. Same applies to those heading out of the club. PRIORITY needs to be given at this stage, with the season lost, to those players who will at Manly, not those leaving.