Who should protect soward in the centers?

[jpaciocco91]

Jamie Soward is 179cm tall and 88kg. He's hardly "skinny" and "frail" as many have suggested. Sometimes he even looks tubby, when he's kicking goals. He doesn't need to bulk up, he just needs to improve his defense. But then again, so do Lockyer, Sandow, Kimmorley, etc. Ironically, the teams with big five eighths (Cronulla- barrett, canberra- campese, souths- sutton) go worse than those with smaller five eighths, such as St George, Brisbane, Melbourne and the Titans. All Soward needs to do is learn to tackle. If he "bulks up", we'll be left with Tubby McSoward. And we don't want that. We'd be worse off then probably.

 

[ME SO HORNBY!]

Cant Scott defend in the centres but attack in the second row? That way we have the best of both worlds. Im sure some kind of structure like this could work.

 

[Firey_Dragon]

If Soward wants to play NRL then he has to learn how to f**king tackle!!!

FFS why is he entitled to being protected??? Dan Hunt drops the ball sometimes but i dont see anyone assisting him to hold the ball every hit up! He has to learn to defend for himself and he will be a better player.

Soward has improved out of sight in defence every season since playing for us. The reality is, you have a bloke that is 5'8 and probably just a fraction over 80kgs up against guys that are 6'2+ and 100kg or so, and you're going to come up short from time to time. It doesn't take a genius to work that one out.

He's entitled to be protected because his role in our side is not to defend, he is our main playmaker, the goto guy. He shouldn't be wasting energy making tackles he doesn't need to. He has improved to the point that Scott could move back into the 2nd row however, and we can add center with a bit more attacking flair without much problems defensively.