Official Briton Nikora

sharks2010

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View attachment 27150

Last years sharks forever, player of the year voting!!!

A bit surprised……Nikora really was MIA, whilst not contract year.

Give me a “cheap” Williams! He is nearly 5x the player!!!!!!
Not sure why that has anything to do with it, by that logic we should be looking for replacements for Uele, Sifa, Brailey and Ronnie
 

Capital_Shark

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I didn’t say the other 2nd rowers were 80 minute players. Also…..I don’t think 250k is enough to secure Nikora and he is def worth more then that, however more then 500k seems super expensive and is desperate club type of money (like tigers)

Considering…….

Next season Finucane, McInnes, Talakai, Wilton, kaufusi are already on the books.

Also Williams hopefully (as far as I am concerned) who has been more dominant then Nikora for the last 2 years…will get signed.

I don’t see a massive shortage in the back row that we are paying massive money for a second rower who has been average for the last 2 seasons and has had 4-5 decent games come contract year.
Finucane, McInnes, Kaufusi & Williams are all middles.

I get you're not a Nikora fan but he's a relatively experienced 80 edge backrower. What middles & low minute bottom dollar edge men are doing isn't really applicable.

I'm not saying go hard on him, just think in the current market he's not dreaming on around $600-ish. I don't want us paying that. I'm sure we made a reasonable offer judged on his worth to us, if he doesn't like that I'm sure we have a plan B moving forward & he's welcome to find his.
 

bort

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600k would put him in approx the top 75 players in the NRL, around top 5 paid player at most clubs.
 

Capital_Shark

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600k would put him in approx the top 75 players in the NRL, around top 5 paid player at most clubs.
There'd be majority of those 75 I reckon most would agree are on overs.

If we put Nikora at $500k, is Kikau really worth $300k more?

**** I think nearly everyone is over priced in a $10mil cap. Success rarely follows paying 1 guy shitloads.
 

Capital_Shark

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I'll stick to simple numbers to illustrate a point.

Nikora (24yrs old, in our system since 17, >50 NRL games, NZ & Maori All Stars rep - development to 80min FG'er done) for $500k

or

2 edge forwards for $250k. Not sure what ya get for that. I think they'd be low minute, inexperienced and require a lotta work.
 

apezza

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Will be interesting to see how much extra it would take for Nikora to leave and join the Tigers.

To keep it simple - if we are offering 500k would you leave for 600k?

Everyone's financial situation is different but with the excitement and potential Fitz has brought to the club you would want at least 200k extra you would think.
 

Capital_Shark

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2-3yr deal on fair coin here he could win a comp or go close then semi-retire at Tigers on massive coin.
 

Sutty

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Given the lack of replacements on the market you would hope to get him for $500-550k I'd reckon, a bit lower than Isaiah Papali'i (Who I think Tigers are getting for a bargain but that's a whole different thing).
 

Gards

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The good news is that they way we attack this season under Fitz we are far less reliant on our second row in offense. We spread it wide and early to our centres / backline with alot of depth - the second rowers running a decoy or simply being cut out by the pass all together. If we go through the hands it tends to be a very quick pass on.

The ball receipts and balls passed stats for our second rowers is very low (Nikora close to the lowest in our team from a quick glance). Compare that to the days of Wade & Luke Lewis who we relied on big time to receive the ball at some point nearly every set and do something with it (Wade a kick or a pass and Lewy a nice line run)

Tieg and Nikora are workhorses that happen to be able to run some nice lines when required off a short pass but they predominately spend their time putting on bit of a step while carting hit ups and making a bucket of tackles.

This gives me more confidence that if we have to replace Nikora a less fancied player may be able to come in and after a bit of time still do a good job for us. He may not have the fleet footness or sharks based experience of Nikora but on the flip side he wouldn't have extracted $600k out of our cap (and that's Nicho Hynes kinda money and hes our halfback!)

Long gone are the sticky days where we thought second rowers were the bees kness and the be all and end all of a team. We actually have a quality functioning spine in 2022 to get us points.

So maybe in addition to Nikora's high defensive workload the other reason he might not take as many runs as we would like him to is that we just havn't needed it as much as say in past seasons as we are flush with options and attacking weapons. It's not like passing it to Nikora is gunna result in a line break or a try every time either.
 

bort

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Apparently Penrith are in for Garner (they also have Geyer but apparently since return from injury he hasn't been great in Cup so makes sense they'd be making sure they have other options)

On list I posted previously Aitken should actually be on there too as he got released from Warriors so he didn't have to go to NZ next year.
 

Thresher

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I'd like to re-sign Nikora.

Reckon he'll improve for the next 2 years and still be just as good as he is now for 2 years after that.

My offer: 520k per year, 4 year deal.
 

Capital_Shark

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I cannot fathom how a player can get out of his NZ Warriors contract because he doesn't wanna live in NZ.
 
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