Peden was a fantastic clubman, basically a workhorse but could do some pretty great things when needed, intercept tries, sideline conversions, saved our arses many times when he was playing. Only problem I had with him was he was rather small and I don't know if he'd be exactly what we'd be looking for in our team nowadays.
Slanderous comment I know, but I've wondered about it for a while. We've had workhorses at our club since he's left but we haven't really been satisfied with them. Seems to indicate to me we might have changed the way we view our firstgraders and the criteria for their selection in the squad, maybe as a result of diminishing success over the past few years. I kinda think we'd be happy with someone like Tanner in the 2001 squad; similar role to Peden (though I know it stops there: Peden was on his day a potential gamebreaker and made everything he did count).
My point is it's interesting to see how the dynamics have changed in such a short time. 'Solid' used to be good enough, now we feel we need solid with a bit more 'excitement' to the point where we feel every player should be capable of winning the match themselves. Definitely not Peden-bashing, one of my favourite memories is Gould saying something like give me 13 Pedens and I'll give you a 3-0 Origin series. Massive heart. I just hope we haven't seen the end of our local comp putting out players of that breed that are regarded as important to the team, because it makes our culture somewhat better I think. I remember Kurt Hancock playing one innocuous FG game off a weak bench in a badly beaten side and being rated as 'not up to FG standard'. Five years ago, or five years from now, in a different team environment, we might have seen a different story.
Where this relates to Chris Bailey is I like him and I hope we do have someone like this in our side in the future, even if it's not him, because I always gun for that kind of player; Julian Bailey used to be one of my favourites. Apologies for the rant, I do have a point somewhere in my brain but it's too far from the topic and I'm too tired to explain it properly ;-) :crazy:
