The soap opera unfolding in Canterbury's backline has another episode, and this one could end with Matt Burton boarding a flight west.
Right now, Burton occupies the five-eighth role at Belmore, but the chess pieces are shifting beneath his feet.
The club is reportedly eyeing a shuffle that would nudge him out to the centres, clearing the runway for Lachlan Galvin to inherit the five-eighth jersey, with Sean O'Sullivan parachuted into the halfback as a stopgap while Mitchell Woods finds his feet at NRL level.
The Daily Telegraph's Brent Read acknowledged Burton could well line up in the centres this season, but he was sceptical about the reality of the Bulldogs' salary cap finances if that move becomes permanent.
“You can't have two million dollar centres,” Read commented on NRL 360.
“In the long term there's no way they could have Matt Burton and Stephen Crichton in the centres because your cap is completely out of whack if you've got two guys on seven figures in the centres.”
Read's understanding of the situation sketches out an almost inevitable sequence of events that sees Burton and his management seeking long-term clarity.
The uncomfortable answer from the club makes him available immediately for Perth to become aggressive and be the logical next stop.
“Inevitably in my view the long term play here is, and I'm not saying this is a Dogs thing, I think Burton will go to the club at some point, I imagine towards the back end of the year,” Read stated.
“He's got one more year left on his deal. I imagine his manager will go to the club and say, what do you think? Is there a long-term deal here for Matt? And they'll have to say to him, well, not at a million dollars a year.
“And if I'm Matt and his manager, I'm then going, well we're going to go to market and see what's out there for us.
“And it would not surprise me in the least and Gus has denied this. I've said it a hundred times, Perth are watching and they're waiting to see what happens with Matt Burton.
“And it would not surprise me if at some point, later in the year, it's not going to happen in the next month or two months, Burton's on the market.”
Braith Anasta agreed on the same idea about the writing on the wall, with the former Bulldog mentioning that the NFL subplot could be his next venture.
“It's looking that way, you've just got to join the dots in this situation, without overplaying it,” Anasta said.
“But it's going to be interesting to see what they do with Burton.”
With the Bulldogs chasing their first premiership in 22 years, every decision the club makes is crucial in maintaining their premiership contention prospects.
