Whilst I am firmly in the H. Puru as the no.14 camp, I'm going to offer up another opinion of maybe how the coaches are thinking.
The structure of the draw.
Our first bye is Round 13, with a helluva lot of travel going on.
They have been very structured with the Interchange, AFB and OK both 43 mins, Toby and Hazo both 30 mins. Leaving Sifa and Atko to pick up minutes around McInnes, with a bit of middle off the others.
I daresay that up until round 13 they are looking for as much stability as possible, and in turn getting ready for the natural taper off that occurs between rounds 13 and round 18 (our first 2 byes).
After that we will need to be playing at a harder level as we have another bye in round 25 before the season finishes 2 rounds later.
So maybe the coaches are trying to keep as much stability going on, barring injury, to counter the draw up until the mid season byes.
If an injury does occur for any of Hynes, Trindall, Kennedy or Atkinson then you'd expect that H. Puru is in the 17, but they may go Hiroti, who knows.
"Strength in numbers" so to speak. It's quite common that the teams at the top of the ladder at the end of the season are usually the ones who have used the least players over the whole course of the season.
Just spit ballin' it.
