KICKOFF: Here's hoping history will be kinder to Hunt

On Sunday, he'll play NRL game number 250, a mighty achievement in any career - especially for a guy barely a hundred days past his 30^th birthday. It was strange, though, to attend his presser on Tuesday where he was up to discuss the milestone.

There was a cautious pride, but tempered comment those who speak to him with any regularity will be familiar with. There's few players more media friendly - that's remarkable enough given the criticism he's faced - but he chooses his words carefully. That's understandable too given the sheer number of pens, fingers and twitter thumbs that sit constantly at the ready to lay the boot into him. Does it all come down to price-tag? It's a pertinent question.

To play 250 games is nothing to be sneezed at, to do it in as quick a time as he has even less so. Mitchell Pearce set the benchmark in that regard, doing it at 29. He's the only current player that can hold a candle to Hunt in the scrutiny stakes.

READ MORE: Hunt not going anywhere as 250^th game looms

Most of what Pearce has copped stems more from performances and rep level than for his club. Your columnist will admit to lobbing the odd grenade there. Pearce lost his first decider at 19, the first of three series losses - and six Origin games - by the time he was 22. Jonathan Thurston debuted at 22.

What it's illustrative of, is just how difficult it is to go from being a very, very good player to a great one. Difficult, but it won't stop people bashing you if you don't.

In reality, there's not enough of the great ones to go around and you certainly can't buy them - that is, you can't pay a very, very good player more money and make him great. Not that any of them would knock it back. Hunt didn't, and who would, but the fact is money doesn't buy performance.

A player off-contract on the lower edge of the pay-scale might find that bit more juice at training or in games, but not those at the top end. As someone who's watched just about every one of Hunt's games for the Dragons, you can count on one hand the amount of times he's left any petrol in the tank. It begs the follow up question, how would Hunt be viewed if you took his current price tag away?

He debuted in the NRL as a teenager and has played 11 seasons. By the time he's finished he'll be closer to 350 games. He's played seven Tests and seven Origins shifting rather seamlessly between the halves and hooker. The only other players in recent memory to do that are Andrew Johns and Geoff Toovey.

It's a fair resume, but he'll get little credit for it in the short-term. Worse than that he doesn't just wear the ultimate accountability for his own performances, but that of his team at club and rep level. Everyone's favourite punching bag, all for accepting money no one in their right mind would turn down. Could the coin be why he hasn't gone sour? Perhaps, but for a guy who's never put so much as a toe out of line off the field, the vitriol is still difficult to reconcile.

There's no question it wears on him. To look at him earlier this season, it's hard to recall a player more visibly carrying the weight of pressure and criticism. He has admitted to seeking out a phycologist in the past to deal with it. It's accepted that with big money comes big expectation, but where does it start and finish?

READ MORE: Is it sustainable to keep Norman and Hunt at the Dragons

There's also no escaping the fact that, at times, any honest appraisal of his performance will, and has been, critical. Plenty of journos and media figures do so through a wince or gritted teeth, knowing how many cheap shots he'll cop on top of it. The way in which he's always conducted himself means there'll be no shortage of people rushing to write up the good stuff should he recapture his best.

He's only 30, there's a new coach coming at the Dragons, something he tipped to be a "freshen up." Fingers crossed we're still to see the best of him. Either way, we can only hope history looks on it a little more kindly than the present.

TIME TO REVISIT CAP CONCESSIONS FOR CLUB LEGENDS

Salary cap concessions for the Melbourne Storm... I know, I know, they've had a few right. Stay with me though.

The future of Cameron Smith - the greatest player to have played our game - is the talk of the town and has been for for the past eight weeks. All indications are he won't be railroaded into making a decision before he's fully made up his own mind.

There's those who believe he's earned every right to make his own call in his own time. Others say it's selfish when the Storm have cap considerations given they have Brandon Smith and Harry Grant on their books.

There's talk of a possible shift to Brisbane or the Titans but Smith just wouldn't look right in another jumper. To be frank, Benji Marshall never looked right in anything but a Tigers jumper either.

He was deemed surplus to requirements by the Tigers this week. It was down to salary cap concerns more than performance. Both instances got us thinking - is it time to reconsider salary cap concessions for long-serving players?

It would need to be structured so it's used sparingly in only few special instances but Benji deserved better than he got from the club he built.

Smith also deserves the right to go out his own way in his own time. Concessions for veteran players have long been spoken about, but with the cap squeeze getting tighter, it's worth revisiting.