Brailey / Crossland / Brown

jamesgould

jamesgould

Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
Staff member
Admin
Now I’ll start this by saying I think there’s a lot of decency bias in assessing Crossland vs Brailey, and I still think Brailey is the better player and he seems very important in a leadership capacity at the club.

But Crossland has been great this season, Brailey is unfortunately quite injury prone, and Brown has been impressive in his matches here so far.

I’m thinking from a cap management point of view, attempting to move Brailey on and keeping Crossland and Brown might be the smart move for us from 2024 onwards.

Thoughts?
 
I really think we should keep Brailey at the club. I think he will be great in a coaching role in the future but he would surely want to keep playing as he is still pretty young.
If he does stay then he has to be the first choice hooker. Crossland has had one hell of a year but he will have to back up one good year with another before he gets a permanent spot and I really hope he does!
 
If we want to compete with the big boys we can ill afford to carry injury prone players under the cap. That's the difference between keeping the next Dom Young or losing them, or signing our next X factor player.

The hurdles for Brailey are massive, both physical and psychologically . I doubt he will be the same again.

1st season ending injury - such a shame , 2nd season ending injury - jeez that's really bad luck, 3rd season ending injury - it's been nice and we wish you all the best.

Really like the trajectory of Crossland.
 
It’s all a moot point unless there’s a team interested in taking on all or at least most of the contract. How much freight are you going to pay on Brailey’s salary (of i would guess around $600K), and what could you actually do with the money you have left over? Like we wouldn’t exactly be selling high on him.

Unless there’s a really compelling reason to do it, eg the desperate need at halfback we had last off season, moving a big contract and paying freight on half the salary is just not a good idea. You can tell because the Bulldogs and Tigers do that a lot at Melbourne and Easts pretty much never do…

The smarter move, if you’re pessimistic about his long term fitness, is actually waiting till next season and fielding offers after he’s played a decent run of games.

Brailey is a lot better than Crossland, but also the top two teams this season have Mitch Kenny and Billy Walters as their starting 9’s. Meanwhile Api Koroisau was less impactful on the Tigers attack than Jackson Hastings, even though he’s probably the 2nd best hooker in the comp.

I’m honestly beginning to think that unless your 9 is the dominant playmaker (eg Cameron Smith), the difference between a competent hooker and a good one isn’t actually that meaningful, particularly in the modern game where teams play 1 out a lot less and there’s far more ball movement and use of forwards as middle pivots… as long as the bloke defends well and gets the ball where it needs to go, you’re probably all good.
 
Well we scored the most tries of any team this year with Crossland there, so he must be going ok.

I agree with what you say about the hooker dropping in importance atm. Not sure if it’s the speed of the play the balls or what but there also seems to be a lot less dummy half running than in previous years (disclaimer: I don’t watch some sides very often so could be wrong on that).
 
jamesgould said:
Well we scored the most tries of any team this year with Crossland there, so he must be going ok.
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He’s honestly going pretty good now. He can keep firing those really long, pretty passes in both directions from dummy half all game now, whereas he was flagging after 30 odd minutes and finding no one with those balls when he first came in. He’s not amazingly deceptive around the ruck still but I think he’s put a lot fancy of the stuff he was trying away and focused on getting the basics right more. I would say getting a glorified training run against the Dogs in the 66-0 game made a huge difference, since then and the following bye he’s been consistently one of our better players.

jamesgould said:
I agree with what you say about the hooker dropping in importance atm. Not sure if it’s the speed of the play the balls or what but there also seems to be a lot less dummy half running than in previous years (disclaimer: I don’t watch some sides very often so could be wrong on that).
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There’s definitely a lot less of it. Part of the evolution of the game. I remember I was rewatching some grand finals over the off-season & I couldn’t believe how much more boring the 2015 decider was than I remembered. Everyone was so conservative, just plowing away with those big battering rams, with so little ball movement compared to the good teams now, even on the back of really fast play the balls. The 2014 GF is an all time shocker for that lol. Everything just happening so slowly.

I think there’s a lot of factors at play, but when those big lumbering forwards were in vogue, there’s a lot of teams making conservative 1-out running key to their strategy. Therefore skill around the ruck to get those middles on the front foot & into dominant collisions was really valuable. As was pace and elusiveness out of dummy half to exploit those big stiffs when they got tired. Just reckon modern fitter, more mobile forwards can defend the ruck too well, get too many bodies around the ball, so if you want to score points to have to get better and quicker at spreading the ball wide and/or changing angles and coming back inside. You can achieve that with lots of quick, short ball movement and good connectedness between all ball handlers.
 
The better part of 1.5 million outlay on Brailey with zero return , for sure will be spoken of and considered at length as a part of the cap due diligence/review. No business invests that kind of coin and not discuss that fact they arent getting a return.

Could mount a very strong argument that Crossland is the better player, he's able bodied and can contribute to the team.
 
Brailey has done everything he possibly could to earn his pay.
I'm not completely sure you could say that about a lot of guys we have payed a lot of money.
It hasn't worked out great for us, but I can't see that anything could have been done better.
He was the guy we needed with plenty of years ahead of him and a good playing record when we signed him, and he has done all the rehab and helped around the club as much as he could since getting injured.

We paid Pearce twice as much to have a go if he felt like it and walk out after near wrecking the joint with his behaviour.
 
See no reason to keep all three, definite yes to Brailey who is the better but injury risk, see how he goes, two years left on contract if sustains a further injury, long term, then time to retire would then need Brown as backup to Crosslands who will likely take 14 with Brown playing Cup unless needed.
This will give time to see how young up and coming hookers are going, if ok then don’t have a need for Brown past 2024 and Brailey past 2025 and I’m sure young JonesR will play plenty Cup to adjust to senior footy.
 
The thing about Nu Brown and Crossland as squad members is they both cover multiple positions for minimum wage.
Brown is not the sort of player I usually want us to sign - an older guy who has never locked down a regular NRL spot - but suddenly, I can see a premiership window opening for us in the next few years, and loading up with experienced and cheap NRL players looks like a good idea.
 
What we did with Kostjaysyn when he got injured in pre-season and couldn't play was to move him onto the coaching staff and cancel his playing contract.
We'll probably know if Brailey can get back to playing by the end of pre-season.
If he can't play, Nailagolivia, Malachi Smith and the kid with the funny name in Mathews would all benefit from some coaching.
 
I personally think that Brown should be retained… maybe worth talking to Jones or Rivett about a development deal potentially to make room for one more year. Just don’t have full confidence in braileys body and don’t think it’s worth losing a handy backup in Brown
 
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