Melbourne Storm sign ‘next Cooper Cronk’ from rivals’ nursery
Melbourne Storm’s secret recruitment system landed them Cameron Munster and Felise Kaufusi on the cheap and has now delivered the next Cooper Cronk from under a rival NRL nursery.
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A teenage bush sensation can be revealed as the Melbourne Storm’s long-term replacement for Cooper Cronk.
While Jahrome Hughes or Brodie Croft could lead Melbourne to a premiership wearing the No.7 this year, 17-year-old Bathurst bush footballer Noah Griffiths will move to Melbourne at the end of the season to begin a new Storm playmaking reign.
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Signed on a four-year deal when he was 16, the Bathurst Panthers star has been earmarked by the Storm hierarchy to become the club’s future playmaker.
“We put a stamp on Noah when he was 15,’’ said Storm recruitment manager Paul Bunn.
“We recognised he was a real footy player early and went after him.’’
Born and bred in Bathurst — just 38km from Craig Bellamy’s home town of Portland — right in the Penrith Panthers’ NSW central west nursery, Griffiths spent the season playing for the Bathurst Panthers in the Under-18s Group 10 competition.
Griffiths has impressed his future full-time teammates during fly-in sessions to Melbourne throughout the year.
“It was actually one of Craig’s mates that called me,’’ Bunn said.
“He told me I had to come and check out the kid. We grabbed him pretty much straight away.’’
With Melbourne famous for turning no-names into NRL stars, Bunn declared the Storm the Harvard of rugby league.
“You can choose TAFE or you can come to Harvard,’’ Bunn said.
“This is the Harvard for football.’’
And it’s a top-secret computer program that is helping Melbourne find and sign the NRL’s next stars on bargain basement deals.
Based on NFL and English Premier League technology, the hi-tech software has already delivered the club some of their biggest names, including a Broncos reject named Cameron Munster for just $5000.
This high-level artificial intelligence system has them poised for more finals success this season.
Unofficially called the “Needle in a Haystack’’, a potentially multimillion-dollar algorithm within the program sorts through data before predicting which rugby league nobodies will become future stars.
Tui Kamikamica, Tom Eisenhuth, Marion Seve and Suliasi Vunivalu were all unwanted players who signed on to play for the Storm for free.
The computer program is so secret that “few’’ outside Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy knew of its existence until today.
“Its proper name is the Melbourne Storm Decision Making Support System,’’ Melbourne recruitment manager Paul Bunn said.
“We gave it a real boring, cumbersome name so that nobody takes notice of it. We don’t want anyone else looking at it and we have never shared it with anyone.
“Only a few people even know it exists and only a couple have seen it.’’
As part of an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Storm, the Melbourne recruitment guru revealed the secret software had delivered the Storm the likes of Munster, Ryan Papenhuyzen and Josh Addo-Carr.
“The program identifies talent for us,’’ Bunn said.
“It is a decision-making process system that picks the needle in the haystack. It helps us find that one-in-a-thousand kid.’’
Kept under military-grade encryption on just three computers, the system has taken almost a decade to develop.
Bunn said technology used by English football giants Liverpool and Manchester City had inspired the one-of-a-kind rugby league software system.
“It is something we have done ourselves,’’ Bunn said.
“We designed and developed it after several trips overseas to research what the best had.
It is based on NFL technology and Premier League. It has a bit of Liverpool and Manchester City.’’
Statistics on every representative rugby league player aged over 15 are kept on the system.
“It holds three years of data on all those players and the rest is uploaded to the cloud,’’ Bunn said.
“We have stats on everything and everyone. Everyone has access to the stats but you need to know how to read them and combine them.’’
The software uses a complex algorithm to work it all out, Bunn said.
“It is connected to edit video and gives us the names and information we need.’’
Bunn’s signing of Munster for just $5000 is the Storm’s greatest coup.
“No one wanted Cameron,’’ Bunn said. “And he came down here on a really cheap rate.
“He was what we called a T-shirt player. He was on a Broncs T-shirt squad playing the role of opposition and they even dropped him from there.
“He never made a lot of rep sides as a junior. They are the ones we like because we know they have had to fight hard to get to where they are.
“He was also playing Queensland Cup at the age of 17 and that is hard to do in a men’s comp.’’
Bunn and his three-man recruitment team — which includes his son and software co-developer Geordie — have defied the salary cap to give Melbourne yet another minor premiership-winning team.
No-names such as Papenhuyzen and Jahrome Hughes were recruited to the team as replacements for Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk.
“We are very data-driven in the recruitment area,’’ Bunn said.
“We are also big on video. We watch 76 games a weekend between three of us.’’
The Storm tracked flyer Addo-Carr for two years before swooping to land the Tigers discard at a cut-price rate.
“That was no spur-of-the-moment decision,’’ Bunn said.
“We tracked the Fox for two years before we made a move. He wasn’t a surprise signing.
“What we do is called deliberate recruiting. Some may call it cherry picking. We don’t have a territory to defend so we track and target.’’
STORM BARGAINS
Felise Kaufusi $45,000
Cameron Munster $5,000
Tom Eisenhuth $0
Tui Kamikamica $0
Marion Seve $0