Well no one picks benches to your satisfaction. They are tailing off pretty badly right now tho if it continues like this it will be a bad look for bellyache, i expected them to be fired up after the loss last week but no coach is perfect, its nice to see them getting flogged. Anyway the reason they dont have one post cameron smith is our run over the years since smith retired. We became the greatest nrl era team and we knocked them out in PF or GF 3 out of the last 4 years. If we were just a normal good team and not the goats they would likely beat us one of those years.
Ivan's bench picks won the 2023 and 2024 GFs.
Garner and Cogger (2023 only) were needed in both games for backline injury cover.
In 2022 I was worried all year Salmon would be called upon to defend long minutes in the centres. Luckily it never happened.
Bellamy went into the 2021 prelim with Grant and Hynes on the bench.
They lost a middle in the opening exchanges and the interchange couldn't operate with a single true forward on the bench, most notably when Spencer came on.
