Gutho is overrated. Glad the club know his value as well. We need a X factor at the back. 2 year deal is good till we find that player. He will never win us a premiership.
That is an outlandish and ridiculous statement. Worse fullbacks have won premierships mate. Hell Penrith just did this last season.
The trick is to have a good enough overall team with power, speed and players that are extremely cohesive and effective in defense. We are/were lacking throughout the season in two of those areas. We are slowly adding a little extra speed(Penisini) and hopefully we are getting our defense sorted somewhat.
Defense is much more important then Guthos lack of explosiveness. I believe we need to be minimum in the top 3 defensive teams, if not number one, with our lack of X players or genuine speed demons out wide, to win it this coming season. Also Mahoney's running game is probably even more important then what Gutho lacks in explosive speed. I mean he does everything else so bloody well.
Bottom line is, Gutho is not our problem. He brings more then enough to the table in his overall game for us to win a premiership. When you boil it right down it is in three other areas that we could do with improvements. A more expansive attacking game, better defense and a little more speed are the areas that we should be focusing on. Mahoney's running game comes under the more expansive attacking game umbrella.
Tip of the week.
I would be sending all our outside backs and Dylbags to that speed coach so he can improve their initial take off acceleration. That is where most of our backs have been lacking over the last couple of seasons. If we could get our wingers and Dylbags that extra half a metre to one metre quicker then they currently are at take off, it would make a massive difference to both our defense and attack overall. For example, it would turn many of those half chances that we currently miss into successful full chances that lead to points that we don't currently get.