This is the single most important thing that has killed the Tigers since 82. I love Greg Miller but his early days at the Tigers just reinforced this, but since TW has come aboard I think the team of GM & TW is doing better, however as TW wrote in his article we were in the box seat last year due to our wooden spoon finish.
TW knows we are up against it this year as he has stated that he wont (& should not) trade top picks for good players even though we need to fill the hole in the middle of our donut team ie few quality mid age players on the list (22-25yo).
Therefore we are left with trading expendable players for other clubs expendable players - which is hard to do and even harder to succeed. Or alternatively trading expendable players for other clubs draft picks, which is even more difficult! Of course the latter strategy makes the list even younger and so improvement on the field will be jeopardised in the short to medium term.
IMHO without alot of judicious trading for decent players we will have a glimmer of hope of rising up the ladder in 2007/08, (ie hopefully Richo, Brown, Lids and Bling all click together), but realistically no shot at a premiership until 2010 ie after today's established stars are retired and assuming the majority of our rookies of the past 2 years turn out to be top liners. :-\
I think the RFC will be up against it for some time due to very shaky foundations that TW & GM are building on, but at least now they have a strategy.
