A rookie winger is not better than Mansour. you are reaching to defend Ivan. If we dished out this garbage when Hook was coach you'd rightfullly be calling him out
MWZ is a reserve grader and I will give you age catching up with Whare and Mansour but DWZ is 23. Blake is 24. Cleary 22. Edwards 22. Aekins 22 these are guys who should be peaking yet are going backwards. Even guys like Leota have stalled or gone backwards. So if not coaching then what?
Teams with Salary Cap penalties and worse injuries than us are doing the job. Comes down to poor preparation
DWZ has already played 3 positions this year so you can’t really expect him to develop any consistency, this is a coaching move but I don’t blame Cleary for moving him around our backline to try and improve it overall to fit other players in, I don’t think he ever will be a centre though.
Blake is just getting no early ball or any space to run into, this is on the Coach’s attacking game plan for sure but really our halves should take the blame also.
Nathan is still only 21 really he turns 22 into Nov and I wouldn’t say he’s at the peak age of a half, halves usually peak in their mid or late 20s imo, plus I think he’s been decent this season even if our attack remains woeful overall which he deserves criticism for, he’s a long way away from being a 900k+ player that’s for sure, hopefully he reaches that kind of level.
Aekins has only played 3 first grade games in his career so it’s far to early to judge, carving it up in NSW Cup is a lot easier than playing the best of the best every week, I still don’t know if he’s our best fullback going forward.
Edwards I think just comes down to injury mostly, I always thought he was overrated anyway but he was definitely a lot better than what he’s shown this season I just think his weaknesses are exploited more when he’s down on confidence due to the injury and he loses his best asset which was his running game, injuries have taken their toll mentally as well as physically which have hurt our players even more just look at Mansour