Is that the raiders premiership window closed?
There's work to do to stop the window from slamming shut.
Forwards-wise: A+. Window wide open. We are overstocked with high quality middles- we'll be leaving two or three of Sia Soliola, Ryan Sutton, Dunamis Lui, Ryan James, Corey Horsburg, Emre Guler, Siliva Havilii out of our top 17 each week in 2021. (Papali, Young, Tapine, Starling, Hodgo are the dead certainties). CHN & Whitehead two quality edges. Blooded a couple of the young edges during the injury crisis as backups.
Halves: A. Window open. Wighton & G Willy are as good a combo as any going around. Certainly capable of winning a comp. Wighton Clive Churchill winner & had a great year. G Willy hit the ground running & took to the NRL very nicely, will get even better for the experience.
Back 5: C at best. Window slipping. Ricky needs to rejuvenate here. It'll be a test of his nerve, man management, eye for talent & vision. It's a slow back 5. It's becoming an old back 5. It's losing it's only x-factor player in Cotric. There's no big recruit likely. We've bought Aekins as a backup FB & a bunch of 18 year old, large body wingers on train & trial.
CNK is good. Great defensively but just a mid tier attacking FB. You can win with him, but you'll want some strike around him.
Rapana looks old & slow. It's making his slightly lunatic defence worse as he's not athletic enough to pull off or recover from the crazy shiz his mind suggests he should try.
Toots had his worst year in FG since he was just a BYC twinkle. Looked physically overmatched but lost the acceleration he once had. Defence was awful in the semi finals (both). Unfortunately he's signed on for 4 more years & Ricky loves him. Maybe he improves & finds his old level of competence in defence & just good enough attack. If not, this will be a major, major make or break point for coach & club.
Scott... Had an awful year off the field. But the fans got a look at our 2 young centre replacements & both looked streets better than Scott & ready to play. Another crunch point for coach & club.
Simonsen/Valemi: Valemi may have just played Simonsen who was at least solid & is a bit quicker, back into favouritism for the non-Rapana wing spot. (Rapana seems likely to benefit from the Croker "good bloke" charity spot since the club just gave him 2 more years).
Timoko/Harley SMith-Shields: looked very promising in limited games. Timoko especially looked a powerful runner capable of providing the tackle busts we'll miss without Cotric.
If Ricky goes with the tried & trusted CNK, Rapana, Scott, Croker, Valemi it'll be one of the plodderest back 5s in the comp. He needs to revamp it but will he have the ruthlessness to do it. It's possible there's a secret stash of Cotric money left (or we'll move a middle along too) to make a play but we seem to have our contract spots filled...
