Mr_Knightside
Juniors
- Messages
- 2,213
I've always been a defender of Mullen, at his best he was one of the best halves in the comp but lack of consistency both game to game and even first half to second half was his biggest downfall.
The timing of his career was pretty unlucky, his debut was when a lot of club legends from our golden generation had either retired, left the club or were on the verge of retirement and then he was left to carry the team over the next decade whilst being labelled "the next Joey" which can't have made it any easier for him.
On top of all of that the club was an absolute shambles through much of that time and our recruitment and retention was an absolute joke, players who would be lucky to make the bench at other clubs were given upgrades year after year just to be shit on the field and our club just became a good retirement home for guys who weren't being re-signed elsewhere.
So it's not as if Mullen ever got an extended period of time playing in a really good team, maybe towards the back end of '06 when we made the top 4 but even that was only one season and he didn't even get picked in that team unless there was an injury. The rest of the time since then he's played in a team with no dominant forward leaders and usually behind a powder-puff forward pack (guys like Dan Tolar and Antonio Kaufusi being starters in our pack still gives me chills) and even then I still feel like we would have picked up a couple more spoons during that time if you take him out of that side.
The guy has always been branded a failure or a wasted talent but to be fair to him he played over 200 NRL games which is still better than most. If he had landed at a well run club from the outset (Broncos, Storm, Roosters etc.) then I have no doubt he could have become a genuine superstar but unfortunately that didn't happen.
Hopefully now that our club is in better hands and we are making some good steps forward then some of our younger guys (Ponga, Lamb & the Saifitis spring to mind) will fare a bit differently and hopefully in a decade from now we'll be talking about how great their careers have been for us and hopefully at rep level too.
The timing of his career was pretty unlucky, his debut was when a lot of club legends from our golden generation had either retired, left the club or were on the verge of retirement and then he was left to carry the team over the next decade whilst being labelled "the next Joey" which can't have made it any easier for him.
On top of all of that the club was an absolute shambles through much of that time and our recruitment and retention was an absolute joke, players who would be lucky to make the bench at other clubs were given upgrades year after year just to be shit on the field and our club just became a good retirement home for guys who weren't being re-signed elsewhere.
So it's not as if Mullen ever got an extended period of time playing in a really good team, maybe towards the back end of '06 when we made the top 4 but even that was only one season and he didn't even get picked in that team unless there was an injury. The rest of the time since then he's played in a team with no dominant forward leaders and usually behind a powder-puff forward pack (guys like Dan Tolar and Antonio Kaufusi being starters in our pack still gives me chills) and even then I still feel like we would have picked up a couple more spoons during that time if you take him out of that side.
The guy has always been branded a failure or a wasted talent but to be fair to him he played over 200 NRL games which is still better than most. If he had landed at a well run club from the outset (Broncos, Storm, Roosters etc.) then I have no doubt he could have become a genuine superstar but unfortunately that didn't happen.
Hopefully now that our club is in better hands and we are making some good steps forward then some of our younger guys (Ponga, Lamb & the Saifitis spring to mind) will fare a bit differently and hopefully in a decade from now we'll be talking about how great their careers have been for us and hopefully at rep level too.