Probably not for 4 years.
That is a looooooooong time
That's what it takes to sign good players alot of the time (the longer contracts) and the club probably envisions building the club/team around blokes like Dale. If we didn't give him 4 years some other club probably would have and for more money.
I think we get a bit too hung up on it sometimes, at least it's not for some million dollar player that plays well once a month and Dale isn't going to demand more money out of us with the threat of forcing us to release him.
If we didn't sign Dale who should we have gone after for say a 2 year contract that is going to give us similar qualities to Dale?
It's BHU we are missing more at present IMO at least in terms of go forward and threatening the line, I thought he was fantastic to start the year.
Yeah might need to put a bit of a leash on this beast. I think those play one hit ups returning the ball into the meat of a well set defensive line should go to someone else to try and prolong Dale a bit.
This should probably be Tolman but he is barely getting half a game lately, maybe Fitz wants him fresh to make all those tackles? But Tolman doesn't have much impact hitting the line but if you just want someone to take abuse and make a carry into the brick wall when the play is actually going to be later in the set he is good for that.
Tolman is slow though so it doesn't get the set off to the quickest start. I reckon Hunt can do a decent job of this and he can turn a nothing carry into a few extra metres or pop an offload and suddenly a well set defensive line is exposed to some second phase. Once a defensive set starts to scramble it can be hard to recover and all of a sudden we have some momentum and are gaining field position with the ball.
Our set plays aren't as effective anymore, we are seriously lacking offloads and prob need to see some more unstructured ad lib play, we have the players to do it. Sometimes we get an offload and the next player just carts it up or spreads it wide for someone else to come up with something.
We might appear like a fly by the seat of our pants kinda team but I actually think we are quite structured and premeditated in what we do and now that teams have figured us we are looking robotic and bit devoid of ideas.
That can be ok if you can get repeat sets and wear the defense down but we are struggling in that department. It's no wonder Hynes looks lost at sea at times when the plays we have relied on or practiced don't end up working and he is looking around everywhere for options.
Roosters destroyed us with offloads the other week but they had the players and mindset to take advantage.
Need to take the line on more around the ruck, Brailz, Kennedy, Hynes ect but they need players supporting. McInnes has been good finding some gaps around the ruck. Going wide will be easier when Jesse is back though.
BHU & Dale back I would hope to see us get back to some hard running and passing in the middle and that then brings into play all the wide spreads that worked for us so well early season but we should keep the pressure on around the ruck as well. We were so good at that in 2016 with holmes, barba, Gal, Maloney ect