It does take time and he might have been made a scapegoat (probably didn't help that his manager was in the media 24/7 slagging off his teammates), BUT I am definitely not at all confident that there's an NRL level halfback in there.
Here's how I'd explain it: there's another guy off contract at the same time who on paper profiles very similarly to Ilias - Toby Sexton. Both will be 24 when the season kicks off in 2025, they've played a similar number of games, and they've had a bit of a wobbly NRL career so far where they've been in and out of their first grade team.
Ilias: 53 games, 10 tries, 22 try assists, 8 line breaks, 23 line break assists, 25 forced drop outs.
Sexton: 47 games, 7 tries, 28 try assists, 9 line breaks, 20 line break assists, 42 forced drop outs.
From these stats you'd probably conclude that Sexton has a somewhat better short kicking game, they offer a comparable running threat, and Ilias is a slightly better ball player. But in my opinion Sexton *is* going to pan out as a first grade halfback and Ilias *is not*.
Here's what the eye test tells me:
- Ilias has played almost all of his games with Cameron Murray, who's maybe the best ball player out of all lock forwards, who takes most of the halfback burden off his shoulders, and despite Souths going off a cliff for the last dozen or so games he's played in, he's mostly played in a notably well-structured and slick attacking system. The vast majority of his try assists are just him going to the line and throwing very simple short passes to Keaon Koloamatangi where he's 1 on 1 with a smaller defender - stuff that more or less any halfback could have done (note that when his form went downhill, it was when they changed Koloamatangi's role in the team, so you had Braith and his media mates giving him shit for "taking Keaon away from him" and "breaking up their partnership" - okay, but why does he need to be playing beside a cheat code ball runner to play good?). He's also quicker and more nimble than Sexton and has a much higher career win % so it's actually weird that he's broken the line less often. If there are many instances of Lachie setting up tries with deft kicks, or throwing a really clever pass to exploit out of position defenders, I certainly haven't seen them.
- Sexton has played with a variety of different teammates, pretty much no consistency at all in terms of which players are around him, and outside of with the Bulldogs this year (1/3 of his career approximately) he's played on absolutely dogshit teams which are getting belted almost every week. Even this Dogs team he's on is known more as a grinding team rather than one which has a good attacking system, so basically, I think when Sexton has been involved in setting up tries, I think almost all of it is off his own back. Wouldn't shock me if more than 20 of his try assists are from clever & well executed short kicks. He came into first grade with one elite skill - his boot, he's a terrific kicker across the board pretty much - but has never looked to be much of a running threat, and his ball playing wasn't great, he seemed to play very stiff and didn't seem to have a lot of deception in his game. I would say he's still not inspiring terror in defences with his legs (he at least seems to know *when* to run, so will break the line at times), but his ball playing has gotten notably better - his rate of setting up line breaks is going up, not down like it has for Ilias, and he does look to me like he's developing a bag of tricks which should continue to improve.
In short: I think Sexton has shown enough that you can be reasonably confident that he's on track for a Chad Townsend level career. A capable 200-250 game+ first grade halfback who may end up playing for about 4 or 5 clubs as he's often the halfback a club is happy with for the moment, but one where said clubs are on the lookout for a more complete #7 to take his place. Because his boot is so good though and he has improved year on year, there is a chance he might end up being better than just capable & reliable.
I think Ilias is destined for the Super League.
If we signed Sexton I'd be happy but not ecstatic, and I'd feel like the halfback issue was finally solved, for the short to medium term at the very least. If we signed Ilias, I'd get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I guess I'd just have to assume O'Sullivan knows what he's doing and sees something more than I'm seeing.
