"not a dynamic, ball-running, match-winning forward"
"given he is closing in on 30, he's not coming into his prime"
sign me up!
also as others have said, what are the coaching staff and other senior players doing if we need to go out and pay a premium for blokes that know how to prepare?
if fans are dark on what klem is doing at the moment finucane and his 120m and 25 tackles a game will send them into a rage. but he's a good bloke and a better trainer, or something.
Off field stuff counts for something, and toughness and impact on the field has a value as well as raw numbers.
HOWEVER - it's unavoidable that it feels like we're stacking way too much of the cap into the pack with very little incentive to do so. We're not getting beaten in the middle - and even at our shittest this year, that hasn't been our biggest problem by a mile.
Klem has looked better since being put on the bench, too. He has lifted his impact game a bit, there's a bit more venom and intent in his runs. I still think we're paying a bit of overs for him, but tbh I wasn't ever one to sit here and say he's a shit player or doesn't offer something to the team - just that we're not quite getting the player we thought we were buying at the time (and that I miss that scary, angry bastard). The Safs continue to go from strength to strength - we have a tonne of battering rams in the team.
Friz has one backrow spot on lockdown whenever he's fit, fill the other one with someone who offers something different. I do think we're seeing a lot more out of the team as a whole since getting the spine finally together - and it can probably be attributed to a whole bunch of things all aligning at once really. I've spoken about belief this year, and you can see that the team has it again with Pearce and Ponga back on the field. The one percenters have come back, the scramble. They actually believe they can win again - and a lot comes off the back of that.
I'm still of the opinion that we're not quite there yet mentally to bring this sort of attitude no matter who takes the field, and that we need to get there. You can't really manufacture belief, though. Comes through hard work and earning it on and off the field. This is the area where filling your team with Finucane types might make sense... if you weren't already dumping a tonne of cash into the pack, and didn't already have a bunch of the same type of player that produce similar on the field. As I said, something will have to give somewhere, or the squad may fall apart a bit and start to look pretty unbalanced in 12 or 24 months time. Watson may end up being the first domino toward that, but we'll have to wait and see.
