Geez that was a high quality game for U/20s, credit to Penrith also, some very skilled kids on display.
Watched it at my local with no commentry.
Who is the young hooker with the Gutho hair style ? kid is a playa
Does anyone think Toniese has an NRL future, if so where would he play. He wears the no 9 but plays more as middle forward than a dummy half and his size wont let him do that in the NRL
The young hooker with the royal hair styling is Reed Mahoney. He took out our NYC Player of the Year gong after a massive season. Leads the entire NYC in tackles despite starting a stack of games off the bench while he also chalked up tries, try assists, linebreaks and linebreak assists.
What really jumps out is his vision from dummy half, he is constantly eyeing off the markers and knows how to work them over. He is also an extremely effective kicker out of dummy half and has rattled off a quite a few 40/20s on top on a stack of quality clearing kicks.
The only real knocks on him are potentially size and a very slight tendency to overplay his hand. If you pardon the pun, he will outgrow the latter while I think he may end up being big enough to play NRL if he keeps displaying the drive and determination he put on show every week this year.
Tonise is probably harder to project to the NRL. He plays a cool hybrid hooker/lock/prop role in the 20s but he probably doesn't own either role enough in the long term. His height more than anything else will let him down. He is built like a fridge but is sub 180cm I think. While Mahoney brings a heap of craftiness and subtlety to the table, Tonise is pure smash mouth footy. Not sure how that translates to senior footy.
