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Burton needs to replace Young or Olaku'atu immediately.
Burton can cover centre and five eighth and even if no backs get injured he can come on if Hynes gets stage fright or you have a tiring forward.
Burton has a massive, massive boot. Critical in Origin.
Queensland show year after year they can cut our kicking game out. So we choose a hooker that doesn't kick, pick two halves that have reasonable kicking games at best and leave Latrell and Burton out of the team
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Sorry but I cannot agree with you about putting Burton into the 17. If you did that, and none of the backs got injured, you'd wind up only playing a 16 player rotation for most of the match, which would wear down NSW's forwards especially its front rowers. Too many people are freaking out because of what happened last year with Turbo. The problem there was not so much that NSW had outside backs injured during the series got injured, but that Fittler decided to use a specialist halfback and a hooker respectively to fill the injuries when he had better options available who could play centre in those situations.
For example, if we NSW got an injury at fullback you could -
- Move one of Suaali'i or Lomax to fullback, with the other then moving either to the wing (if Lomax to fullback) or if it is Suaali'i to fullback, you could move one of Hudson Young or Angus Crichton to the centres (as both have played there in the past when injuries have hit the side).
Burton also is not a great ball player in my opinion. He is more a runner of the ball. I mean why else do you think Maguire has had Luke Keary running at haflback during training so far with Hynes limited due to his calf? If Burton was a better organiser and bull player, you'd think he'd be doing instead wouldn't you?