I've said this in the rumours and signings thread, but a lot of our supporters seem to overhype average players who have hit a small patch of good form. For example we should have thrown big money at Asiata, while this year alone I've read in their that we should make big money plays on Paasi, Latu and Matagi. I believe this is what happened with cook. After his good little cameo at the end of 2015 at the bulldogs everyone got aboard the hype train. But the simple fact is Cook has played no where near the level he played during his bulldogs cameo. But i think people are refusing to believe that, that he hasn't lived up to the hype, and it may even be a subconscious thing. In their minds every half break is converted to a full break, everything good that happens on the field can be traced back to him. The sloppy service, especially on 5th tackle, the brain fades, the panicky plays and hospital passes when he doesn't want to get tackled and the continually being bumped off in defence is completely ignored. When we won a few last year it was down to him, yet he played 80 in some of our worse losses and that's ignored. We had Inglis and reynolds back and firing, and all 3 burgii in good form for the last 5 games of 2016 but many will tell you it was cooks doing. It goes in reverse as well, as many will pick apart any minor errors his competitors (mcinnes and farah) make. It's so bad that many souths fans flat out refuse to believe what almost everyone other nrl follower does, that mcinnes is now one of the form hookers of the comp. Like i said it's a subconscious thing, people want to believe cook is going better then he really is, the club even contributes, Cook had appeared in more social media posts then any other player with possibly the exception of Sam. It's almost like subliminal messaging. Cook is an average hooker with a 1 huge asset, speed. He is good enough to fill in for first grade but i don't think he is a hooker you can build a game around like Smith, Luke, Hodgson, farah in the past and mcinnes in the future. He lacks vision, he doesn't have the temperament, he can't quite control/manage things and his defence isn't up to standard. The fact that many souths fans think he should play origin says a lot
