How your NRL club will attack greatest halves market frenzy in a decade | Locker Room
The NRL is set for the biggest open-market playmaker free-for-all in years and we reveal how your club is set to attack this unique opportunity.
There is no better time to be an average halfback in the NRL.
The game is edging towards the most significant exit of elite-level playmakers in a decade.
By 2025, almost $8 million in first-class playmaking talent could be gone.
As a result, fans are on the verge of the most frenzied player movement in years. Maybe resist buying that favourite player’s jersey.
Winding down the clock on their careers are the most influential players in the game including Adam Reynolds, Daly Cherry-Evans, Ben Hunt, Cody Walker, Shaun Johnson, Kieran Foran, Chad Townsend, Matt Moylan and Luke Keary.
It’s a star-studded collective that boasts a drawer full of premiership bling, World Cups and State of Origin jerseys.
All of them are inching towards their mid-thirties and none of them have a contract longer than the next two seasons.
Who will replace them and does the game have enough quality halfbacks to do so?
The answer is no, which will drive the price up of any half with an ounce of potential or talent.
Clubs formulate their salary cap two and three years in advance, so don’t think for a second that your team isn’t already working on a plan to replace the aforementioned veterans.
Equally, the list of quality halves on the open market for next season (2024) is scarce, which will force a host of clubs to sit tight, go with what they have on their current roster for 2024, with the plan to going big in 2025. Additionally, any club with a developing half that is tied-down to a long-term deal is in the box seat.
It’s why when South Sydney coach Jason Demetriou cranks up his defence of 23-year-old halfback Lachlan Ilias, it’s not only because he believes it.
It’s also because he’s telling the rest of the game to keep your mitts off his No.7.
The Sharks are wearing some bruises during a development phase of Nicho Hynes’ second season as a halfback. He has played just 78 NRL games.
What the Sharks are hoping is that, within the next two years, with extra layers of experience, plus with the game’s best halves heading for retirement, Hynes, 27, will be peaking at the perfect time to emerge from the shadows of Cherry-Evans, Johnson and Reynolds, as one of the premier halves in the NRL.
The Eels did their own halfback forecasting last year. They did an appraisal of the halves market and which halves would be coming off-contract over the next three seasons.
They saw what was available and realised two things.
Nothing was better than Dylan Brown and secondly, they couldn’t afford their gun to be part of a soon-to-be crazy transfer market, so they signed him to a deal through until 2031.
The Eels realised what many of the game know now, the potential vacuum of more than 2,000 NRL games worth of experience is a collective void that will send the halves player market into a spin.
The winners will be every young half with an ounce of potential.
Penrith’s Jack Cogger, 26, was playing for Huddersfield in the UK last year.
He’s played more NSW Cup games for Penrith this season than first grade.
Last Wednesday, Newcastle signed him to a three-year deal from next season.
Look at the Raiders, they still haven’t replaced Jack Wighton, who is headed for South Sydney, with a like-for-like replacement.
But what they have done is target the best up-and-coming half in the game, NSW under-19s halfback Ethan Sanders.
Not enough can be said about Canberra’s ability to steal the Parramatta halfback before the mad rush for halfbacks begins.
The Bulldogs are another club that have moved quickly to recruit a halfback before panic buying at rival clubs sets in.
Just 22-years of age and playing alongside Matt Burton, halfback Toby Sexton, 22, not only has upside in his development, but his arrival at Belmore has provided the Dogs with the ability to buy time in the halves and instead target a major recruit in their forward pack.
The Wests Tigers have been smart also by recruiting NSW under-19s five-eighth Latu Fainu.
They are also close to signing Jayden Sullivan, 21, from the Dragons.
It may not bear fruit immediately for the Wests Tigers, but the timing of signing the duo and their development over the next two years could prove telling when the game goes into meltdown over a lack of available halves.
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