There's not much of this I can agree with possm, with all due respect.
possm said - To be fair, many on here including myself were supporting the idea of Widdop at fullback. I form an opinion early in the trial game against Newcastle that Widdop was playing injured or was protecting his shoulder against re-injuring it before moving on to his new contract.
Widdop was only moved to fullback because Dufty was making a mess of his game through poor defence and lack of confidence when taking a high ball. Well as t turns out, Widdop is no better defensively right now and let some high balls bounce when he could have taken them on the full. More than this he only ran about 16m in round 1 and mostly ran sideways when he took possession of the ball.
Widdop was moved to accommodate Norman pure and simple, just as Dufty was dropped to fit Norman in. If Dufty's form was a problem we wouldn't have re-signed. He's our future fullback 100%.
I agree Widdop at the back has been terrible, his kick return metres are embarrassing, his support play non-existent and his positional play near our line and try saving skills were much better when he played 5/8.
It is truly time to let Widdop go and let him prepare his body for his next contract. It is also very important that we use his salary together with De Belin's salary to bolster our squad with experienced to grade players we most urgently need at the moment. One or two games with Dufty at the back will tell us if we need to purchase a new fullback/winger. Again, one or two games with Pearson and Lomax on the right edge will tell us if we need to buy a new centre/winger.
No coach in the NRL would let a player of Widdop's calibre go early, quite frankly it's a preposterous idea. He's in the top 3 5/8's in the game and as many point out his kicking game is as good as anyone's. Note to Mary "Just give him his jersey back you f***ing arsehat"
Lomax will be in the team within the next few weeks, you can put money on it. Aitken is a great runner of the ball but useless in defence out wide, having him in the team is reckless, keeping him is willful sabotage.
It is very clear we need to buy a high quality backrow forward right now. With K Sims coming into the side, the extent of our problems in our forward pack will become clear however, Leilua is not fit enough to be in the run on side and possibly be on the bench. I do have confidence that we have our prop rotation covered with the likes of our young forwards; Kerr, Timm and Lawrie.
Our backrowers are Frizzel, Sims, Host and if he can regain some form,Leilua. If we need more backrowers they should be promising youngsters we can bring through - do we have any ?
Unless of course we could find a mid to late career Beau Scott type somewhere as back up I'd be OK with that.
We need another quality prop to replace DeBelin and possibly a second for the bench as I don't think Kerr and Timm are going to shine quite as brightly as we may hope. If they do surprise us we keep them and drop Latimore.
Question : Where the hell did the Broncos find all those great young forwards so suddenly out of the blue ?
