{"id":374565,"date":"2025-12-27T07:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T07:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374565\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T07:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T07:06:08","slug":"souths-fans-right-to-be-devastated-as-star-forward-joins-dragons-in-5-million-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374565\/","title":{"rendered":"Souths fans right to be devastated as star forward joins Dragons in $5 million deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Sydney have many big earners including Murray, Latrell Mitchell, Jack Wighton, Brandon Smith, Campbell Graham, Cody Walker, Jai Arrow and Koloamatangi. David Fifita has also arrived on a two-year deal worth about $500,000 per season.<\/p>\n

Fifita\u2019s deal has been subsidised by a partial payout from his previous club, just as the Rabbitohs had to offer Englishman Lewis Dodd a financial sweetener to convince him to terminate his three-year contract and return to Super League. Payouts to former players count under a club\u2019s salary cap.<\/p>\n

\"Cameron<\/p>\n

Cameron Murray and Latrell Mitchell, Souths\u2019 highest-paid players, made only 12 appearances between them last season.<\/p>\n

Long story short, almost two thirds of Souths\u2019 salary cap invested in one third of their squad, leaving about $4 million to accommodate the remaining 20 members of their top 30.<\/p>\n

Eventually, some of the top-end talent was going to be squeezed out, and Koloamatangi\u2019s career-best form last season ensured he was always going to attract outside interest.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

If he hadn\u2019t agreed to join the Dragons, who flew him to Wollongong in a helicopter to conduct negotiations, Parramatta were waiting with a similarly lucrative offer<\/a>. The Perth Bears are also desperate for a marquee signing as they prepare to enter the NRL in 2027.<\/p>\n

Signing Koloamatangi is a coup for Dragons coach Shane Flanagan.<\/p>\n

As for the Rabbitohs, Bennett knows better than anyone that, while it\u2019s handy to have game-breakers with a bit of X-factor, consistency is the key to long-term success. And in Koloamatangi, Souths are set to lose arguably their most consistent, reliable player.<\/p>\n

Replacing him won\u2019t be as simple pulling another Rabbitoh out of the hat, even for a coach with Bennett\u2019s unrivalled experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Sydney have many big earners including Murray, Latrell Mitchell, Jack Wighton, Brandon Smith, Campbell Graham, Cody Walker,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-374565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}