Quote ="bigtruck"I agree to some extent but what i keep coming back to is the quality of competition. Our game doesn't have the depth of quality in it like the NRL does and players don't play against players with high enough quality week in week out therefore "Good" players like Watkins, Yeaman, Shenton etc stand out more against the lesser quality players more making them look "world class" when in fact they are nothing of the sort. I know the level of competition is not Watkins fault but portraying him as the next best thing and great hope like some on here are, is stretching his actual quality to the limit. As far as the Pack and halves are concerned, IF Macca can pick a full strength pack witht helikes of Hock, Burgess, Graham, Ellis et al, then that part of our game doesn't worry me at all. I agree the halves are a problem, Brough, Myler, McGuire, Burrow are not good enough. Lomax is still unknown at top international level and Sinfield should not be playing at 6. Sorry hoing off the original topic but quality halves and quality centres are the 2 areas we ahve struggled to fill for a long time.'"
You say that we've struggled in the halfs and centres but really when was the last time our mythical pack out played the Aussies, and laid a platform for our backs? In the last 4 nations we beat New Zealand and IIRC Sinfield was MOM and England managed to win fairly comfortably on the back of our forwards out playing the NZ forwards resulting in time and field position for the halfs to execute a good kicking game. In contrast, in the final we were unable to match the Aussie pack which resulted in the England half backs kicking the ball from well inside their own half, and we ended up getting hammered.
Yes, I do agree that we've not produced many top class backs but until our forwards can out perform their Aussie counterparts as a unit then it won't matter who we have in the backs.
