Dufty and Field have the potential to become solid first grade fullbacks, but they are both a long, long way off that and have a lot of work to do around positioning, organising the defense, composure under bombs and most importantly, defense. Carving up u20s and being dangerous in NRL against organised, drilled defensive walls are 2 very different beasts and Field got a lesson in last year's Charity Shield that his dummy-and-skip move wont cut it in the top grade. For every Lachlan Coote or Ben Barba, there is a handful of Evander Cummins' or Nathan Gardner's who dominate lower grades against poor defense and never make their mark in first grade.
A ball-playing fullback is super handy but hardly the be-all and end-all as a requirement for the end set of hands and decision making in an attacking set. When you've got a fullback as defensively strong and as powerful a ball runner as Dugan, he can be used an extra man wider as a ball runner and utilise other players as the 'link man'. The lock, for example, can work as first receiver with the halfback and 5/8 combining. Alternately, Dugan could have been used as an inside strike runner to open up options for a ball-playing centre to be the decision maker. I get that the 'sweep play' we perfected in 2010 is effectively, but the Roosters of 2013 showed that some out-of-the-box thinking in attack can create dominance without it (if you remember, many of their set plays came as a combo of their half, 5/8 and backrowers, with fullback playing as a ball runner). The problem has always been Mary trying to shoehorn him into a role that his skillset is not suited for, rather than building an attacking structure around our best player.
