Quote ="jonh"…but we do have Field and French, so I’m not sure what the point it.
Each player brings their own individual parts to a team effort.
If you don’t see what he brings to the team and what he does to allow Field and French to do what they do then again, I’m guessing you don’t fully appreciate the game fully.
More importantly for O’Neil, we have Smith who does the bulk of the organising which allows O’Neil to get us into the right areas of the pitch to set up the plays and provide a high level damaging effort role in the middle both sides of the ball, which whilst Powell has in style in reality they are not in the same league as O’Neils ability to do this.
I’d actually say Field and French are lucky to have him doing what he does in the middle creating fatigue and slowing down the slide defence which creates space on the edges for the likes of them and others in the team to exploit.
Like I said earlier it’s not all about who puts the ball down over the goal line, just like Leeming who generally comes on once O’Neil has softened up the middles.'"
The team has such a good balance, with each player bring their strengths to the party and covering other players weaknesses and vice versa and that spreads throughout the whole team. Field and French are as lucky to have somebody like Harry Smith, as he is lucky to have them.
I do think O'Neill is a bit different. The point still stands that he's lucky to have those strike players and a game managing scrum half like Harry Smith and they're all lucky to have him but unlike somebody like Smith, I do think O'Neill has an ability to do more with the ball 'if' he was asked to do so. He can run a ball and cause loads of problems but I sense him doing a Clark and taking a couple of scoots a set isn't part of the the gameplan and he's humble enough to play his role and hand over the ball to the attacking weapons we have. That leaves him fresh to do his thing, which has he showed in the WCC game, is to be the leader of all the effort areas and to really take it to the opposition in defence. It's easy to forget how young the lad is as well. To be doing what he's doing, playing in the middle of the field, at the age of 22 is exceptional and he'll continue to improve. I wouldn't swap him for any other hooker in Superleague.
