you are completely wrong about uate.
- his defence is improving steadily
- he is the fastest player in the nrl
- he gets the ball more at fullback in broken play i.e teams sh*t themselves
- he is improving under the high ball
anyone with half an idea about rugby league will tell you he is way to big a talent to waste away on the wing.
as for gidley in the centres...
do you not watch Aus play at all?
he has covered there a few times and set up some good trys at centre, and has very rarely missed a tackle. gidley and vuna have the potential to be a great combination.
uate still gets caught out in defence
massively on a regular basis, and i'd hate to see him going 1v1 or 2v1 on any linebreak. if by improving under the high ball you mean he has actually learned to catch low chips to the wing with zero pressure on him then sure, i agree. put a few bodies in motion around him, or 2 or 3 opposition players charging him down on a spiral bomb and it's a different matter altogether.
uate is an absolute star on the wing, and gidley is a star at fullback. i'm not a believer in fitting players into positions just because they are playing well... and weakening areas of our game to strengthen other areas. there is nothign wrong with our attack at the moment whatsoever, there are plenty of points in the team... and moving aku to fullback could only be seen as a move to improve our attack by weakening our defence game. uate gets tonnes and tonnes of ball returns from the wing against broken defensive lines as it is. there is no reason to change any of this, as it is already damaging in it's current form.
gidley filled in
ONCE at national level in the centres, and set up a
single good try with a lucky kick. his effort was admirable in that game and impressed me a lot, however once again there's a massive difference between filling in for half a game and playing there week to week. gidley has very few of the attributes required of a top line centre.
anybody with half an idea about rugby league would tell you that specialist wingers are a valuable commodity... and that fulbacks need ballplaying ability in this day and age. aku is a specialist winger and is improving in that position... not at fullback. aku has zero ballplaying skills and zero rugby league vision. can you honestly picture aku chiming in on backline movements, putting in deft long and short passes to centres? i certainly can't. can you see him taking the right option when a line break is made? can you see him catching a spiral bomb mid field, with 2 or 3 opposition players either bearing down on him, or competing with him for the ball?
there's just way too many problems with all of this to be worth considering. it's changing something that is tried, true and effective and putting question marks all over the place in return.
