Quote ="craigizzard"The question marks that remain are:
1) Will Falloon be an adequate replacement for Aiton? If he is, we're well set. If not, we don't want to be relying on Burrow as hooker all year.
2) Will we be able to replace Sinfield/Peacock's direction and game management? Kev has been doing less ball-in-hand and even open play kicking over the past couple of years, so I think we can replace that. Whether we can replace his smarts is another matter.
3) Goal-kicking. We're just going to have to face that we'll average 2-4 points less a game due to the difference in ability between Sinfield and Sutcliffe/Hardaker. No easy answer to this (other than score more tries) and it could cost us a few tight games.
But overall I'm more confident ahead of this season than I've been for a while. Now watch it all go wrong...'"
Those are very good questions.
1. I suspect Fallooon (or indeed any other hooker playing in the NRL) could do a passable imitation of anything that Aiton did last year. In other words, I've no worries on that score.
2. You call it smarts, I'll call it steadiness under pressure. I don't think that can be replaced, at least not immediately; it takes a hell of a special player and a hell of a lot of experience to marshall some of those tight, backs-to-the-wall games. That isn't a disaster as we're still good enough to feature in them and we'll win our share; but maybe not quite the lion's share we've enjoyed.
3. Can't argue with how you see it, except that without Sinfield's control we may actually blow more teams away by playing more flamboyantly. We'll probably lose a few more too.
