Weight is a tricky thing - since some players have more muscle, some have heavier bones etc. Cayless doesn't look as small as many people say he is - his upper body is very muscular and he could well be 106 kgs. Mannah certainly has a bigger frame, and can probably add more weight through muscle as he ages.
Good point.
Since height and weight are the closest measurements we have to determine size (volume) without sticking players in a bathtub to see how much water they displace, we look at those, but as you've shown, just eyeballing the players is fairly effective (we agree that Mannah is bigger than Cayless, for example).
Prove to me that 105-110 is average please. I'm not saying I think it isn't, but you just say it without any substantiation. How do you know that? (particularly when you don't know how heavy your own teams props are...)
How could I prove that when I don't trust the figures given in player profiles? I got that weight range through observation (trust your instincts) - whenever a front rower's weight is listed, the vast majority of them are between 105 and 110kg.
What do you think an average sized front-rower's weight is? I suspect you agree but don't know yourself where you get that range from.
As far as not knowing the weights of Parra's props - I've seen the figures and I don't believe them. And even if they are correct, as you point out they could well be, I'm talking about
size more than straight height and weight. You've admitted Mannah has a bigger frame, which was my original point.
Big and useless squad - Cannings was 114kgs, but was injured most of the time; Stapleton 101kgs; Pearson 105kgs but that doesn't matter since he was a ball player
Well Cannings was a monster - both to look at and on the scales. Stapleton was another with a big frame but clearly he was quite rangy and maybe under-muscled. But certainly a big bloke just as far as height goes. Pearson was big in the sense that he was very broad and rotund despite his height (he had a high BMI) - just like Fui.
And who was the other prop in that experiment? I forget... But Stapo and Pearson weren't as big as the current blokes.
Stapleton too lean and Pearson too short? In their own way they both seemed to have bigger frames than Cayless and Vella (the other prop at the time). Vella was very skinny for a front-rower but he was probably the quickest and had very good leg drive.
No offense intended here mate! Just saying that the props seem to be a big bunch...
Of course they're big; they're NRL front-rowers. But none of them are monsters like Civoniceva, Weyman, King, Perry, Rose, Mason, Burgess, Taylor and Ross.
Now, I'm not saying we need monsters in the team. Generally, front-rowers are a defensive liability - plenty of line-breaks are made around them - and it seems the bigger a prop is, the worse he is in defence (except when people run straight at them, ie. other front-rowers).
I think our big 4 are great - possibly the most mobile in the comp - but they're far from the biggest.
