Well that is blindingly obvious if you think for minute. I refer you to the wisdom of the great John Monie who said if you get three first team players from an entire crop of academy players you have done well. He is an academy player of 20 years old so he's in the same boat as all the rest of them. He might make it, he might not.cherry.pie wrote:How do you know? You've never seen him play!DaveO wrote:This is a ridiculous signing.
If you watch the Chairman's address from the end of season dinner he is telling us we have the best sporting academy bar none in any sport.
So what do we do? We go and sign a 20 year old "project" from overseas. Why has he got any better chance of making the grade than one of our own young players? He's not!
I'd also bet my house on it i have seen as much of him play as Wane - on You tube!
But clearly we have not. As soon as Lockers leaves the pitch we fall apart. Every one of those players has had the opportunity to step up to the plate at some point this season and has not. Being 30 instead of 29 isn't going to make a difference. They would have done it already if they were ever going to. Several of those players are part of the problem, not the solution.You're right about leadership, but we've got plenty of experience in the forwards. At the start of next season O'Loughlin will be 35, FPN 30, Flower 30, Clubb 30, Joel 30, Tautai will be 30 by April, McIlorum 29, Isa 28 and Faz 27. Even Bateman is now mid-20's so now should be approaching his prime.Apart from the obvious hypocrisy of doing this, we don't need more young players. We need experience and leadership on the park.
He's 20 years old with zero 1st grade experience. Even if he is a year or so in front of Kibula (who looks ready anyway to me) he is still going to lack experience and so is going to be just as likely to make mistakes as any young player when what we need if we need a forward (and we do) is an experienced prop out of the Craig Smith, Pongia mould. He's 5 foot 10 so has to get into the back row before Faz, Bateman, Isa and Joel as surely he can't be seen as a prop to be picked before CLubb, FPN, Flower and Sutton.Navarrete will presumably leave due to homesickness, Kibula and Barnes aren't ready for 1st team rugby yet and still qualify for the under 19's, Partington isn't ready for 1st team rugby either. Bretherton hasn't really done much to push for a place and might benefit from guaranteed rugby on loan and Joel is constantly injured.
Given we've got players tied up on contracts and don't have much room to manoeuvre I'm happy to wait and see how Hamlin goes before suggesting it's a ridiculous signing.
Regardless of his academy status he is also just another "middle" and we have enough of those not to be signing one who will compete with the existing ones while offering nothing of what we actually need.
I am sure he will get a game mind. New signings always do regardless under Wane.