The biggest offer for Mitchell came from Wests Tigers. He basically didn’t even return their phone call. Now he’s interested in playing for the Rabbitohs on way less than the Tigers offered. Maybe even less than the Roosters’ offer of $800,000 a season. Arrow is the type of player you could build a club around – so that’s what South Sydney will do with all their spare Sam Burgess cash. He’s signed with them for $800,000 a season from 2021-25 (plus third-party deals). But expect him to be there next year as well. He’s on less than $500,000 at the Titans for 2020 and the Rabbitohs will offer someone up and get him early. Titans star forward Jai Arrow has signed with the Rabbitohs for 2021, but he could be there earlier. Credit:NRL Photos The Titans wanted to build the club around him to them lift off the bottom of the pile.

But as soon as Arrow was able to negotiate with other clubs – a ridiculous 12 months out from the end of his existing deal – he was shopped everywhere and is gone. The Titans have had issues in the past – most notably when many in the team were more focused on buying cocaine than winning an NRL match – but that is in the distant past. They have new, passionate owners – Gold Coast locals and top-class business people like Rebecca Frizelle – a top, vastly experienced chairman in Dennis Watt, formerly a long-term News Corp executive who himself was a first-grader at Norths in the Brisbane competition back in the Joe Kilroy days. Watt stamped himself as a top league executive when handed the job of cleaning up News Corp’s mess in the wake of the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal. None other than Immortal Mal Meninga is the club’s head of football and culture. They've also got a new coach, with no baggage, in Justin Holbrook. Is this farewell? Latrell Mitchell looks almost certain to be playing elsewhere in 2020. Credit:AAP

The challenge for clubs such as the Titans and the Tigers, perennial bottom-eight teams, is enticing players to the club who are good enough to drive you into the top eight. Then you have to get them to stick around. Arrow is an interesting case. A Gold Coast native, he played juniors for Burleigh Bears before being scooped up into the Broncos’ system. Wayne Bennett handed him a first-grade debut in 2016 and, after 25 top-grade matches, he decided to head home to the Gold Coast. In his two seasons there, the Titans finished 14th and last, and now he’s out of there, enticed by the culture and prospect of long-term success at the Rabbitohs, a club that, ironically, has won one premiership in the past 48 seasons. A club with as many premierships in that time, Wests Tigers, also made a big play for Arrow and came up with nothing – as they did with Mitchell. Why do the Tigers struggle to sign these players? It’s a question the club has to answer honestly after looking hard in the mirror.

Is it the lack of a home: training at Concord, playing at Leichhardt, ANZ Stadium, Campbelltown and Bankwest, club headquarters at Ashfield … Yes, there’s a centre of excellence coming, but the Titans have one, too. Most clubs do, including Penrith. How’s that going for them? How does Tigers coach Michael Maguire attract good players to his club? Credit:AAP The basic fact is that players see these clubs as non-winners and career crushers. They look at what’s happened to good players who have gone there – in the case of the Gold Coast, Tyrone Peachey, Bryce Cartwright, Ash Taylor – and don’t like what they see. They look at the list of top players who left the Tigers – James Tedesco, Aaron Woods, Mitch Moses, Josh Addo-Carr – and wonder what drove them out.

How can Meninga and Holbrook at the Titans, and premiership-winning coach Michael Maguire at Wests Tigers, create a winning culture without being able to retain and recruit players who can give them success? Fans of those clubs will be entitled to scratch their heads if Arrow and Mitchell (and Addo-Carr) drive the Rabbitohs to the top with excess Burgess funds in 2020 and 2021 while they languish at the bottom again. Australia captain Tim Paine has indicated he wants to carry on as skipper for some time yet. Credit:Getty More pleasure for Paine We found out what Tim Paine was thinking this week. The ICC’s new Test championship at Lord’s in July 2021 is his target. Expect to see him stay in charge of the Australian team against Bangladesh mid-2020, against India next summer and then for a tour of South Africa.

As he and coach Justin Langer set about rebuilding the shattered and battered team, they targeted the new Test championship final as a goal. Ahead of the Boxing Day Test, Paine all but said he would try and see that task through. At the beginning of the summer, from the outside, Steve Smith looked a certainty to return when his leadership ban ends in March next year. While he is undoubtedly fully "rehabilitated", the appetite to go back is not there. Cricket Australia loves what Paine has done. The public loves what he has done. Also waiting in the wings is CA’s new golden boy, Pat Cummins. Do not underestimate his standing among the game’s powerbrokers. He will be cherry ripe to lead his country by the summer of 2021-22.