I guess it’s a result of fullback having been a prime position for so long- it’s the spot all the elite talents WANT to play in.
Compare that to centre, which is somewhat unfashionable compared to past decades, to the point where one of the best centres in the game (Latrell) thinks he’s above the position and insists he’s a fullback.
I agree as well.
The new rules have supplanted the Fullback position as the Apex of the Salary cap.
We are now talking about Prop forward as the top money earner. Not just any Prop mind.
Props with big engines (easier to state than it is to actually find or harder still create due to the dynamic factors between the continuum of mass and endurance`/big fat dudes do not make good marathon runners).
This is why I rate What Mcfadden is doing at the club in terms of recruiting footballers over athletes. Athletic types in Rugby league parlance mean explosive power and speed, guys who are great in the gym and are natural mesomorphs. throw in footwork and balance as optional extras and scouts come running waving cheque books. Which sadly is only half the true meaning of an athlete.
In the Olympic sense, a decathlete is the most athletic human being known to man kind....this is more in keeping with where the money is shifting in Rugby league to super fit Props, who are more decathlete type than the oldschool big line benders and big hitters.
League is a simple game, size matters. Speed matters. Skills matter, but all of that is secondary to endurance (because of the maxim rugby league is a defensive game).
This idea of a fullback being the most valuable in salary cap terms runs against the fundamentals of the sport itself. In a collision sport that designs game plans around tiring the opposition and dominating the middle third, a fullback does no more than others in his contribution of laying down the winning foundations of the model that is Rugby league (I am talking working both sides of the ball, all the attention of the cameras and commentators is on the attacking side and fullbacks are superstars on the ball).
I get why fullbacks became the Rockstars of the sport, Billy Slater happened. Slater was a stand off with wing speed and a side step gave the Melbourne Storm three halves against the rest of the competitions two halves. Lets all give credit where it is due, Craig Bellamy did this. And today we see Reece Walsh having a devastating impact on the game in the same tradition and demanding the sexy money and getting the media spin that goes with being a fullback.
But Reece Walsh would be a waste of talent were it not for the evolution of the block shape, the out the back door play that has the fullback chime in at speed which creates an overlap of numbers. We all know it well, SJ was the pivot for us last year when we ran it, and CNK was the back door man. Incidentally Matt Elliot introduced that play to the Warriors with the help of Andrew Mcfadden. Credit where credit is due.
So we have a collision of two things happening to change ruby league - first the invention of ball players like Slater at the back - second the new block play that makes the fullback the extra man. It is important to see these two changes to the game as separate and not the same.
Let me explain. CNK thrives today, despite not being Slater like, or Reece Walsh like, CNK cannot ball play any where near as well as those two. But the Block shapes invention makes CNK useful and a fullback Warriors fans love. All that said lets not forget that RTS came before Charnze and for the same reasons he was good. Not a ball playing fullback, but a guy that can thrive with the block shape right edge attacking structures.
In relative terms fullbacks do bugger all work compared to say a super forward (like Sam Burgess). I chose him because he is one of the school of modern change merchants that is part of swinging the argument away from fullbacks as your best, Sam Burgess made being a Prop and a loose forward an interchangeable function of a modern team. A revolution in this sport. One that multiple clubs now try to emulate, which is why so many game naming Tuesdays at the Warriors see middle forwards shifted all over the middle third in the search of multi functional prop back row interchange types.
At our own club we see the benefits of this footballer model, in Mitchell Barnett we have a guy who can go from Prop to any position in the back three of the scrum. Jazz Tevanga, the smallest forward we have, yet he can hold his own in the middle third against much bigger blokes, because he is 100% footballer and bugger all 'athlete' about him.
Neither Jazz nor Mitch Barnett are guys the opposition fear in terms of going 'shit he has the ball mark him they are making a move here'.
Excuse the rant but this is a subject that intertwines with my personal sports involvement over the years. Guys like Barnett have nowhere near the athletic power of an AFB yet here we see him rising because of his motor and his drive.
Speaking of drive and motivation, Rugby league is a century behind Olympic sports development in terms of how Rugby league approaches the training of child athletes. In my family we have two Olympians. And my own daughter was on an Olympic pathway in two sports, gymnastics and the pool.
What I learned while trying not to be a Ballet Mom...supporting my kid was that compared to my own childhood in Rugby league, the league coaches do not have a freaking clue about training kids, neither do Union child pathways have anything on Olympic sports. League kids set ups focus on fun. Olympic kids trainers focus on teaching kids winning is the only fun there is.
In Gymnastics for example seven year olds under eastern European coaches in NZ (I am sure Aussie is the same) are being pushed to do fifteen pull ups for a warm up (I am talking about seven year old girls).
In Swimming, 12 year old girls who are on the New Zealand team fast track like my girl are training six days a week, some of those days are two training's a day. You wake your kid up at five am and start carbo and Protien loading them, they hit the pool and thrash out kilometers with coaches pushing them harder to perfect their strokes etc on every lap, then they go to school for the day. You pick em up and give them snacks to calorie load so they can hit the pool again two hours after school. It feels like Child abuse yet when you check in with your kid it is all they know and they want more.
Some practices they swim 400 laps at a pace that would thrash most high-school swim team girls who are not in an Olympic program.
I compare this to my going to Papakura Sea Eagles training twice a week for two hours as a child and have the coach make us do stuff like run and do tackle bags....without ever saying why or what a game plan is.
Now imagine if League kids trained like Olympic child hopefuls do. Yeah well it won't happen until there is the same type of 'for the flag' nationalism and wonder attached to Rugby league that is the Olympic machine. Which is why the sooner the NRL expands into two NZ Franchises and PNG and internationalises that competition the better.
Excuse the rant across multiple spheres but it strikes me that this sport idolizing fullbacks is wayyy off beam from where the units of value should be placed.
One day someone in the NRL will create child training pathways for kids as early as the Olympics start from aged five.
And that club will be unbeatable for years till the rest catch up. Can you imagine a club that has kids training six days a week as a norm like Olympic sports train kids?
That does not happen in a minnow sport. It will not happen in Rugby league until the sport expands. The reason Olympic countries start training four and five year olds in sports like professionals is because of nationalism and what medals mean to national pride. Which is why League wins stuff all at the Halbergs.
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