It is funny how the Newcastle Knights fans, and our idiotic selectors, are the ONLY ones who want Kurt Gidley there. At least RABK has some common sense.
Who cares if he had a few good games for Knights? He has shown time and time again that he is NOT an Origin fullback!
No-one cares if he can make 150+ running metres from fullback at Origin level. Slater makes half the metres, but has twice the impact because he actually breaks the line.
Gidley this season = 8 games for Newcastle, 2 linebreaks. 2...and that is including the one he made today.
Last season, Gidley broke the line 3 times in 21 appearances for the Knights. 2 of those linebreaks came in a man of the match performance against the wooden spoon Roosters who had by the far the worst defense in the competition.
Gidley might make a lot of runs, but at Origin you need a fullback with an x-factor, a linebreaker with pace who can score tries and pose a serious threat. Hayne has been garbage this year too. Dugan and Coote are by far the form fullbacks available for NSW selection, and if you knuckleheads calling for Gidley's selection can't see that, then your heads are further up your backsides than Loz, McCarthy, Bozo and Gerrard.
By some of your logic, if Cooper and Weyman went back to club level and had good games, they deserve selection ahead of players who have been consistently performing better than them this season. Hmm...