Evans played on a team that was wrecking the opposition whereas Papali’i played on a team that was on the back foot and got them back into the game.
Got us back into the game against their bench forwards? Mate the point is you're judging him on one game against shit opposition. The momentum often shifts when the bench middles interchange because their quality relative to the opposition's bench are often different. Penrith have a much better bench than Brisbane and Papali'i was far less effective in the trial.
Evans has demonstrated that he is never going to be consistent and even after one game I’m confident we will have the better end of the trade. We recruited Evans for size as well and when he was the starting prop we got the spoon.
He only started four games that year with another four off the bench. He was hampered by injury. In his two seasons not disrupted by injury he won 23 from 35 games (66%). Overall he won 58% with us, which is better than his 54% with the Roosters.
It wasn’t until we signed some quality players that gave us some go forward that Evans put in the occasional good performance off the bench riding off of that.
He started 13 of 19 games in 2019, winning over 60%. He was good for us, which is why the Warriors signed him. If you only remember 2018 where he came into a team with off field issues and missed pre-season with a broken arm then you're not looking at the whole player. Likewise, only judging Papali'i based on his first game is stupid as well.