Paul Kent: Sharks put to the test in battle for Adam Reynolds

The battle for Adam Reynolds has shown how important it is for a club to have someone who can get a deal done, writes Paul Kent.

Adam Reynolds is weighing up offers from the Broncos and Sharks. Picture: Brett Hemmings/Getty Images

The greatest asset a football club can possess is not a halfback averaging three try assists a game or a middle forward who gets through 200-plus metres or a fullback that runs like Might And Power.

The great truth is missed at most clubs.

So much is invested on new toys and the appearance of professionalism, the Fool’s Gold of pro sports.

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Late last month Cronulla announced Craig Fitzgibbon as head coach for 2022.

Soon after, Fitzgibbon had a day off so thought why not get Reynolds and his manager Steve Gillis and the Sharks in a room and get a deal.

Adam Reynolds is weighing up offers from the Broncos and Sharks. Picture: Brett Hemmings/Getty Images

Fitzgibbon knew how important Reynolds would be for Cronulla and so a meeting was quickly organised.

Here, the Sharks made their first mistake.

Their first offer to Reynolds was kind of like the first offer made when purchasing a house. Low-ball the offer and wait for the counter and slowly work towards a figure both sides find agreeable.

Strangely, the Sharks proposed an offer that scaled down each year.

This is the opposite to how it usually happens.

And it was clearly in response to the Sharks’ weeping at the money being spent on the likes of Josh Dugan and Andrew Fifita in the final years of their contracts as they struggle to find form anywhere near that which earned those contracts in the first place.

So the Sharks, no doubt feeling smart about themselves, thought their diminishing deal offered tremendous value for money.

For them, perhaps, not so much for Reynolds.

Regardless, with South Sydney refusing to budge beyond a one-year extension and Reynolds knocking back a contract at North Queensland the Sharks probably felt they were on solid ground.

But Reynolds is made of different fabric. He is not into counteroffers but from a place where a dollar’s wage is offered for a dollar’s effort.

Somewhere about now the Daly Cherry-Evans Rule should have been invoked at Cronulla.

Sadly, they are probably not even aware of it.

Most fans remember the Cherry-Evans backflip when he pulled out of the deal to join Gold Coast when the NRL allowed a two-week cooling off period to stay with Manly.

Few remember the lead-up.

Incoming Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon met with Adam Reynolds. Picture: Jonathan Ng

As the Titans proudly proclaimed the Cherry-Evans signature a turning point at the club, Manly went away knowing they had two weeks to change his mind.

Bob Fulton was leading the cavalry.

Fulton is one of the game’s great deal-makers, he would fight Nick Politis for the heavyweight championship, and mostly because he knows when to play polite and when not to.

With a strict two-week time period put on convincing Cherry-Evans to backflip, Fulton sat down with Manly powerbrokers and Cherry-Evans’ management to find out what was needed to make Cherry-Evans stay.

Publicly, Manly vowed they were still in the fight. Privately, it looked like they were dreaming.

About this time I called the Titans and asked what was planned to convince Cherry-Evans to honour the deal after Manly had got to him.

They thought it was hilarious. This poor idiot writing for a newspaper with no idea the way it works, even if there was already speculation Cherry-Evans was considering a backflip. The Titans sure chuckled at that.

No, in all seriousness, they were quite confident their deal was enough to keep Cherry-Evans heading to the Gold Coast, and all you could think of was the poor Titans.

They believed in the sanctity of the deal.

Bob Fulton was a key figure in Daly Cherry-Evans backflipping on the Titans to sign a long-term deal at Manly. Picture: Gregg Porteous

The Sea Eagles believed in a deal eight years long and worth an estimated $10 million. Cherry-Evans is still the highest priced player in the game, at Manly.

So Cronulla half-cooked their offer and in the time Reynolds was wondering how much the Sharks really wanted him Brisbane realised they really needed him and swooped with a better offer.

Anybody who knew Reynolds knew right from the beginning he had a preference for the Gold Coast lifestyle, even though the Titans were never interested, and so the Brisbane offer came with unseen benefits, an hour from his retirement plan.

Meanwhile, the Sharks were caught in the process.

There are some players who mean so much the usual chains of command must be bypassed to go straight to the men who can get the deal done.

The Sharks finally responded Monday with a deal that comes in at about $100,000-a-year more than Brisbane’s offer, just as Reynolds looked set to commit to the Broncos.

Now the acid is on Cronulla.

John Morris was sacked as coach last month and one of the reasons offered was a perceived failure to attract top-level talent.

Reynolds is putting that to the test.

The greatest asset a club can have is someone who can get the deal done.

All else flows off that.