???
He is probably one of the best players under a high ball to have ever laced on a boot. He also has exceptional pace and was exceedingly hard to tackle. All of these things would make him a fantastic kick returner. If you ignore the extra 5/8 element of the modern fullback and focus purely on the ability he would have to return the ball at pace and beat tackles, he ticks those boxes.
The extra 5/8 element is overplayed imo. It's not like a fullback needs exceptional vision or any sort of kicking game, the likes of Boyd and Hayne sit out the back of a set move, receive a cut out and throw a pass to the winger and they usually only do this on their preferred side. They run this same set move 1000 times a week at training. You could train a monkey to do it, let alone an athlete like Folau.
So in summarising you think he should play fullback because;
a) He'd make a fantastic kick returner;
b) He's good under the highball
a) Wingers these days make just just as many kick returns as fullbacks, most clubs usually drop back 1 winger and have a left and right fullback to clean up long kicks.
b) Fullbacks
rarely every compete for the ball these days, there's the odd mid-field bomb but compared to cross field kicks for wingers it's not even comparable. You'd just be nullifying his best attribute (aerial ability) in
defence & attack by playing him at fullback. Most bombs these days aren't even competed for, they just hoist them up and hope the fullback drops it, anyone can do that what a waste of Folau's ability.
You can't just dismiss the ball playing role of the modern day fullback, you say it's easy to draw and pass or to be used in a set play but Folau never displayed this when he played in the centres. He was woeful at getting his winger into space so I'm not sure what you think has changed since he went to AFL and has come back.
Even if you want to argue that ball playing from your fullback is overrated he needs to offer something else like support play which he's never displayed throughout his career so it'd be a massive assumption to think he could just pick it up. Support play is instinctual, it's not something you can just learn in the off-season.
As for the Hayne argument, if you seriously think all he does is sit out the back and is made to look good through set plays you seriously need to watch more Parra games. The guy is one of the most creative players in the game, up there with Thurston & Marhsall imo.
