Recruitment Warriors 2026/2027 Recruitment & Retention

Warriors 2026/2027 Recruitment and Retention Discussion​

Player	2026​	2027​	2028​	2029​	2030​
Mitchell Barnett	✔​	✔​
Rocco Berry	✔​
Tanah Boyd	✔​
Kurt Capewell	✔​
Erin Clark	✔​	✔​
Wayde Egan	✔​	✔​
Kayliss Fatialofa	✔​	✔​
James Fisher-Harris	✔​	✔​	✔​
Jackson Ford	✔​	✔​
Morgan Gannon	✔​	✔​	✔​
Leka Halasima	✔​	✔​	✔​	✔​
Chanel Harris-Tavita	✔​
Sam Healey	✔​	✔​
Eddie Ieremia-Toeava	✔​	✔​
Alofiana Khan-Pereira	✔​	✔​	✔​
Jacob Laban	✔​	✔​	✔​	✔​
Ali Leiataua	✔​	✔​
Jye Linnane	✔​	✔​	✔​
Freddy Lussick	✔​
Te Maire Martin	✔​
Haizyn Mellars	✔​	✔​	✔​
Luke Metcalf	✔​	✔​	✔​
Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad	✔​	✔​
Marata Niukore	✔​
Adam Pompey	✔​	✔​
Tanner Stowers-Smith	✔​	✔​	✔​
Taine Tuaupiki	✔​
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck	✔​
Demitric Vaimauga	✔​	✔​	✔​
Dallin Watene-Zelezniak	✔​	✔​
Jett Cleary	S​	U​
Sio Kali	U​
Braelan Marsh	U​	U​	U​
Motu Pasikala	U​	U​

✔ = Signed to Top 30, C = Club option, M = Mutual Option, P = Player option, S = Signed to supplementary list, U = Unclear

2026 Top 30: 30/30
2026 Supplementary: 1/6

2027 Top 30: 21/30
2027 Supplementary: 0/6

2027 Gains: Nil
2027 Losses: Nil

Off contract and free to sign elsewhere for 2027: Rocco Berry, Tanah Boyd, Kurt Capewell, Chanel Harris-Tavita, Freddy Lussick, Te Maire Martin, Marata Niukore, Taine Tuaupiki, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck
Will be off contract and free to sign elsewhere for 2028 from November 1st, 2026: Mitchell Barnett, Erin Clark, Jett Cleary, Wayde Egan, Kayliss Fatialofa, Jackson Ford, Sam Healey, Eddie Ieremia-Toeava, Ali Leiataua, Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, Motu Pasikala, Adam Pompey, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak

 

[Makasene]

Extensions don't effect the salary cap, upgrades do. Tohu, SJ and Walker were likely tying up $2.5m of cap together. I just dont see the upgraded players getting paid an extra $2.5m combined. We have added players like Clark but he was an out of favour bench player at the Titans who actively wanted to come back to NZ. Id be surprised if he was on spectaular money. I guess to put in perspective we lost three (arguably) marque players and didnt sign any new ones in 2025. There surely has to be money left over.
Also i understand you can never believe the salary figures used in the media but going by them we gained around $150k from the AFB to JFH swap, which is less than 2% of the cap but still a very enticing amount to use when trying to attract/keep a new player.

I guess I'm not fully understanding your argument. The Salary Cap is not a one year at a time proposition, extensions quite obviously effect the salary cap... Today's cap situation is a result of yesterday's extension activity.

SJ / Tohu / Walker were not contracted beyond 2025. If we are to believe that coin was set aside for SJ & that Tohu was medically retired (freeing up his salary for 2025) and that Walker left mid-year (even though it was Rnd 3 the salary starts Nov 1 previous year) I think most likely there would have been a bag of cash available to throw at someone last year but that would have longer-term affects on the cap as anyone worthy of that money would also need a multi-year deal, so really even if we did have the cash it was hard to spend.

I think the club played it perfectly, took the chance to give massive minutes to the youth last year and it will pay off handsomely.

We are now being reported as in for NAS which suggests there is still wiggle room there for a mid to upper tier short-term (maybe 2 years) contract.

TLR

Yea there was probably a heap of cash available last year but the club were smart about it.

 

[Fizurg]

I guess I'm not fully understanding your argument. The Salary Cap is not a one year at a time proposition, extensions quite obviously effect the salary cap... Today's cap situation is a result of yesterday's extension activity.

SJ / Tohu / Walker were not contracted beyond 2025. If we are to believe that coin was set aside for SJ & that Tohu was medically retired (freeing up his salary for 2025) and that Walker left mid-year (even though it was Rnd 3 the salary starts Nov 1 previous year) I think most likely there would have been a bag of cash available to throw at someone last year but that would have longer-term affects on the cap as anyone worthy of that money would also need a multi-year deal, so really even if we did have the cash it was hard to spend.

I think the club played it perfectly, took the chance to give massive minutes to the youth last year and it will pay off handsomely.

We are now being reported as in for NAS which suggests there is still wiggle room there for a mid to upper tier short-term (maybe 2 years) contract.

TLR

Yea there was probably a heap of cash available last year but the club were smart about it.

The salary cap works year by year. So extensions don’t make any difference to the current years cap. If the team loses a player that’s on say $500k for that season, you can extend every player in the teams contract but you would still have $500k of cap left for that season. Which is just what happened when Tohu and Walker left early. On top of that there was SJ who was slightly different since him leaving was known about so could be planned for but there is still no sign where his salary cap space was used. Once again I think the easiest way to explain my point is that we lost three marquee players and didn’t sign a single one to replace them. Personally I just can’t see how the team managed to use that money fully. Did they just run short in the cap that year? Did they pay handsome bonuses to current players? Did they substantially upgrade players who were already contracted for the 2025 season? Were they substantially over the cap and having those players leave brought them back into line with the cap?
None of those situations really make sense but it has to one of them.
If your neighbour traded three Ferraris for three Suzuki swifts and upgraded his Mrs car from a Corolla to Volkswagen you would have to think the car yard ripped him off.

 

[Teets]

View attachment 14930

To be fair, looks like a tank. Really excited to see how this fella goes!

Looks more rangey than tank imo. Got that noodley physique Rocco Berry had when he started.