Player movements and rumours

I think the Roosters are really pushing the limits here, on two fronts.

Firstly, they're really pushing the limit on exactly how fucking soulless their fans can be. If you have the third best club halfback in the comp, who's 28 and played at the club for ten years as a one club-player, won a premiership and multiple minor premierships ... and you shaft him for a half who is admittedly marginally better but is 33 and was contemplating retirement, that's fucking cold as ice. They've really doubled down on their identity as the short-termist club looking to buy whoever might improve their roster on paper by fucking 2%. I think fans who might like to think the club is about more than that might be fucking pissed off with that sort of shit. They've always been more like that any other club, but they've basically gone #FullAI on this front.

Secondly, their really pushing the boundaries in terms of people thinking the salary cap actually fucking works. If you've got a halfback earning $800,000 per year playing off the fucking bench, then there should be some serious problems with the rest of your squad. You shouldn't be able to sign three marquee halves without having massive holes in your roster if the cap works as designed. I've always dismissed the "lol Roosters are over the cap" talk as conspiracy theories from armchair accountants who support rival clubs, but nah fuck it. If the salary cap works the Roosters should have a fucking shit squad having over-invested in halves. If both Keary and Pearce stay and they make the top eight anyway (which they will, for certain), then it's time to just abolish the fucking cap altogether. At least everything would be fair and above board then.

 

Yeah I completely agree with all of that. I think it would have been very Roosters for them to just shaft Keary when Cronk came on the market, ignoring a good purchase and a good season in favour of something that was a bit better in the short term.. but shafting Pearce instead is something else.

In terms of the cap thing, I've always thought that going through team squads and arguing that Team X or Team Y has to be over the cap is basically the lowest form of dumb fan shitposting, but there does come a point where it becomes silly, and I think we've kind of reached that point.

I don't think Easts are necessarily over the cap, but if they're not then it's just as big a problem -- that a team can just sign three halves on huge money and not have it ruin the rest of their squad if they're rich in the right way as to get around the cap. The Roosters squad would be mid-range even with mid-range halves, ffs. So I'd favour just getting rid of the cap entirely at this point -- it doesn't do what it's set out to do, and getting rid of it would at least give clubs incentive to be financial successful in any way they could, rather than just the ways that let them stay technically under the cap with third party payments and other such deals.