Agree. Speed and power is not our forte..never has.
Yep....even when we won it, you could not say we were the most athletic team in the comp. Our mobility and ball play around that time got us home.
Wests Tigers / Balmain for most of our history have been blessed with very good fullbacks though. Our fullback drought started with Teddy leaving but we now have a decent prospect in Bula.
As far as outside backs though, things have been very bland as far as the joint venture has gone. Even in our premiership year, we had Fitzhenry (strangely went ok with starting sets off), Elford (decent but in the bottom rung of starting centres at that time), Whatitura (had his one great year with us) and Richards (only elite standard back we had at the time aside from Hodgson).
If you had to do an all-time WT starting 5, even a few of those players are hardly elite for their time.
1. Hodgson (Teddy had more ability but Hodgson definitely gave more value to our club....easy pick).
2. Richards (Elite winger.....easy pick).
3. Whatitura (One great year....but that year was 2005......debatable pick)
4. Lawrence (Good centre.....but even he had some definicies with defence and ball handling. Debatable pick).
5. Genuinely undecided....we have had a few decent ones but all had their holes. Lote (good but a long way from his Bronco form), Koribete, Nofo and Tuaki (powerful and fast but had limitations) are in the running......very debatable pick).