Isaiah wrote:
I can't see Kelly extending his contract again, so keeping Abdul may be important for medium to long term
Whilst i think keeping JA would be a good long term investment as I and a fair few others have said he's not the style of player Radford has looked to use certainly not at LF. Also would Kelly be in big demand even IF he continues on in the same vein as \this year, he'll be 28 by the time he would be starting at a new club in 2019, would he be a target for a club in a role that would pay him big enough bucks for him to move back there, is money the motivation or is it that he might just want to move back home even if on similar wages but lesser chance of first team rugby? he's currently a bigger fish in our pond, would he be considered good enough to be a starter back in the NRL, that's again based on the hypothetical top form being played in 2018 and/or no bad injuries so it's all supposition at this moment in time.
Someone asked previously if we had indeed uprated kelly from his salary this year and I replied I thought it would be a considerable jump all things considered, but in any case either the club saw the one year as a balancing act/bit of a gamble or Kelly simply only wanted one year in any case.
Personally given when the signing was made (after showing us how good he could be) I thought it a little strange to only sign a one year contract extension. IF kelly does continue in this vein next season then his stock goes up again and it could cost us more and IF an NRL club were interested beyond 2018 he'd have still being under contract and thus we could have got a fee for him of some value. This is why I'm unsure as to why just the one year extension for what was a valuable and top form player when the extension was signed.
it's clearly in his best interests to keep performing/keeping his head straight from a financial POV if NRL clubs do come sniffing but as we know from the past, rumours started by agents are solely done to ensure that they can extract as much money as possible to retain the services of said player.
All that said we have Connor/kelly or Sneyd/Kelly with Connor at centre, some are saying Connor is the better option than Sneyd and certainly from a goal kicking POV and other aspects Connor is pretty much a match, in that he has massively exceeded expectation, i for one really wasn't sure where he was going to play if everyone fit but with Griffin's form being well off the pace, Fonua and Talanoa injuries and also Sneyd's he's probably the best value signing for some years.
So if kelly does go after next season who plays where and who replaces him, if anyone would we sign to replace him, is Connor/Sneyd a viable long term option in the halves, I don't think it is.
