Why Wests Tigers would be foolish to offer Luke Brooks huge NRL contract

PAUL KENT: As one of Wests Tigers “big four”, off-contract Luke Brooks’s next deal is expected to be a big one. It’s just the stats suggest otherwise..

OF the 44 men that played in the halves last year and for the three games into this year Luke Brooks, now part of the famed Wests Tigers “Big Four” ranks 38th.

Brooks is off-contract and expected to push hard for a major upgrade as the Tigers strive to also retain his skipper Aaron Woods, halves partner Mitch Moses and fullback James Tedesco.

Jason Taylor was sacked on Monday as the Tigers board came to the sudden reality that re-signing him might be detrimental to retaining the services of all four.

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The numbers mentioned for Brooks are significant. Where there’s smoke, there’s somebody smoking something, as they say.

His ranking among his peers is a sharp slap for the Tigers and their negotiations given they were under the belief Brooks is one of the game’s emerging stars.

The club has invested in him and was prepared to invest significantly more.

One of the great sins of salary cap management, easily committed, is paying for potential.

It is justified only when a player finally fulfils all he is supposed to be yet in other, less acknowledged cases, clubs have been cruelled by pouring money into a player who only ever sort of gets there.

And it carries risk. That is what the Tigers face.

Brooks has a big reputation — but does he back it up? (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Brooks is 22 and about to sign the first significant contract of his career. Understandably, his manager Isaac Moses is talking first-rate money. Moses has significant ammunition.

The reputation Brooks has carried since he first came into the top grade — winning man-of-the-match in his first performance and prompting some to declare he will be the solution to NSW’s halfback problem.

Already his scrapbook is bulging. It is not his fault. He has no say how others regard him.

But it is based on such conversation that Moses now feels it is justified to chase the kind of money for Brooks reserved for the very best playmakers.

Fox Sports stats show Brooks, in his fifth season in the NRL, ranks a long way down the list of the game’s best playmakers.

The stats show their legitimacy the moment they push out Johnathan Thurston as the best half in the game and Cooper Cronk as the runner-up.

Third is the enigma, Shaun Johnson, with James Maloney fourth and Mitchell Pearce fifth.

That is some top five.

Mitch Moses and Brooks represent two of the Tigers’ great hopes.

Thurston and Cronk are all-time greats. Johnson an international, hard to define and harder to confine.

Maloney has won premierships at two clubs, excelled in Origin, and was a major influence in both.

Pearce is a premiership-winning Origin player, yet still only 27. His best years are head of him. Let’s remember, Thurston wasn’t the same Thurston at the same age. What could Pearce become?

To push out the top 10 you then pass through Anthony Milford, Daly Cherry-Evans, Michael Morgan, Adam Reynolds and Moses Mbye. Not a bum in the group.

You have to go a long way down, though, to find Brooks, who rates ahead of only Josh McCrone, Cameron Cullen, Fa’amanu Brown, Sam Williams, Jayden Nikorima and Jack Cogger.

Mitch Moses fares better, ranked 20th and grouped around fellow youngsters Nathan Cleary and Ash Taylor. It shows he is tracking towards being a dominant playmaker. Brooks’ major liability is defence.

While nobody particularly wants a halfback known as a tackling machine it is worth remembering that for every try conceded one has to be earned back just to break even.

It is a common secret within the game Brooks can be exploited defensively.

Simply get your playmaker to hold the inside to isolate him defensively and then have a big guy barrel him. Half the time it ends in a missed tackle and the rest of the time is generally ends in a legs tackle, deemed ineffective in the modern game.

Look at what the Raiders did with Junior Paulo terrorising him last Sunday. He went straight over Brooks and put Elliott Whitehead in to score. They continually made ground through him.

Brooks’ other failing is that the statistics are weighted slightly according to results. Halves that play in teams that win more often score slightly higher.

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Where it becomes a problem for the Tigers is that every coach the halves own the results.

Also, it has not affected Mitch Moses nearly as much.

Isaac Moses will argue Brooks’ development has been slowed by the coaches in charge and that he is a rocket still on the launch pad.

The Tigers will acknowledge they want to keep their big four together but admit that, privately, the big four might actually be the big three-and-a-bit.