Bahaha great thread, what a chance to re-live some 'great' memories
Bad Defenders
Manu - Always tried 100% and learned to fix those terrible hands, but had that incredibly annoying habit of leaping out of the line so you always needed a strong centre inside him.
Ropati - ... Was not the strong centre Manu needed. He was ok defensively for a while but towards the tail end of his career became a rank jersey grabber.
Fisiahi - Rocked on up from juniors and got the shock of his life when asked to defend like an actual fullback
Tui - Forget tackling, he completely failed to even read play and position himself, U-12 stuff
Ken - Improved now but was lucky to be under Kearney & allowed a very long stint of filth to sort himself out
Kata - He's lazy, capable of good defence but is one of the first to go when things get bad. Been ok this year.
Bodene - Even lazier, he's much better than he ever chose to be for us, hated this guy
Tomkins - A trier, but too small and outclassed to even tackle Ben Barba standing still
Gelling - Maybe not a big enough sample size, but that Storm effort was a joke
Godinet - Pure turnstile, anyone of any size just rolled right over him
Mason Lino - Some horrid defence was disguised by Harris and co., but they can only do so much
Hiku might be worse than everyone on that list, which seems unimaginable.
Bad Defender Myths
Johnson - Honestly I don't recall him ever being that bad. Sure he's let a couple through in his early days but he's always gotten better and does a better than reasonable job for a half.
Maloney - Some terrible stats but it's not as bad as it looks, there was a good article somewhere about how his huge missed tackle count is skewed because he's often the first man in who then falls away, but does enough in the contact for others to finish the job. With us in 2012 he was always left to handle someone like Paul Gallen on his own and got expectedly humped, hardly his fault because he actually bothered to try.
Neilson - Defending was literally the only thing he could do.
