3. Recruitment Impact
It's become pretty standard stuff that successful teams are often torn apart very quickly due to salary cap constraints. The Panthers were unable to buck that trend.
They've lost captain James Tamou and rep regular winger Josh Mansour, as well as the likes of Whare, Hetherington and Laurie, all of whom will walk into first grade elsewhere.
They were able to somewhat offset the losses by adding Eisenhuth, Momirovski and Sorenson but look light on in the middle. Tamou played a massive part in the Panthers 2020 season and will be difficult to replace.
Otherwise they've been able to keep 16 of their preferred 17 together (with Staines preferred over Mansour). That's incredible considering modern day contracts.
SEE ZT's own Dan Nichols in This Week's RLO Episode: Round One Celebration!
