Speaking of Higgers..boy did we shit the bed there
Well, not entirely the Reds/QRU's fault to be fair.
- partly to do with the crazy and crude Aus S15 salary cap model which potentially hurts teams with numerous, long-serving top players to budget for
- partly to do with the low 2013 ARU top up offered to Higgers last year when the Reds salary budget - capped as above - maxed out with the likes of JH, WG, DI, QC (Quade Cooper) etc to fund on big $s........and this low ARU top up offer to Higgers was in large part due the extraordinarily poor economic management within the ARU sending them into large losses last year which meant they had to further cut their offered top-ups (truly a sick joke now that we see they paid JO'N $2,200,000 for his 'top ups' last year)
- partly as Higgers wanted bigger $ in total, etc. and the Rebs could afford to pay up above the Reds base offer