Prolonged success is very difficult in the salary cap era

[Crusher_Cleal]

I think we're forgetting how unlikely it was in the first place of having 10 straight years near the top in the salary cap age. Success is cyclical, and regardless of the fact that we've made a mess of things, we were always likely to have some lean times after our playing group started ageing. This is especially the case when players contracts have to be upgraded from very little to very high (ie DCE, Foran, Buhrer, Hiku, etc), and existing players needing upgrades (Stewarts, Watmough, Matai, Lyon).

 

[mickqld]

It's almost like we've deliberately cleaned out because we are monumentally over the cap. Or is it a case of promising big salaries by backend deals and then in their last year unload them to another club and only pay half the price.