I feel kinda sorry for CNK. I see his limitations like everyone else does, but overall I think he's been pretty outstanding for us but his spot seems to be constantly in question based on hypotheticals about how well someone else might go in his spot. All the while, he's breaking tackles and churning out 200m a game and seemingly getting very little credit for doing largely the same stuff he was getting massive praise for in 2023.
It almost feels like sacrilege to say this, but I'm not entirely convinced we'd get the same sort of consistent output from RTS or TT. RTS is not 2018 RTS anymore and TT is a different sort of player,
Yea CNK is a warrior in every sense of the word and every time I’m critical of him (like when he was extended) I feel like I’m kicking Bambi a little bit. I’m not entirely sold on Taine being the long-term answer either to be fair, but I do like the fact he’s probably the least predictable of the 3.
But on RTS, I’m still convinced he’d offer as much, if not more than CNK if given an extended run back at fb. And I think his #’s support that.
In the two games he started at fb last year he ran for nearly 300m each time. Across the whole season, he averaged 182m pg, compared to CNK’s average of 202 pg.
But RTS did that while stating 13/18 games at centre and therefore with very little kick return meters. He also did it while regularly being shunted around to plug holes; I’ve mentioned this before but he played every single outside back spot for the team last year, on both sides of the field. Despite all that, to still be within 20m pg run metres of CNK is remarkable.
I know there are other measures of a fb’s effectiveness but we’ve long viewed CNK’s work rate and effort as his greatest asset, and run meters is a strong indicator of that, particularly when viewed over a whole season to smooth out anomalies.
And on that particular measure, as recently as last year, IMO Roger tops him and quite comfortably too.
