Are you trying to say that Hayne would not have played so well if he had have been blooded at the beginning of the year, Colonel? If Hayne had been in an underachieving team he would have underachieved himself?
I beg to differ. Hayne is a perfect example of a kid who came up and straight away showed that he is first grade material. We lost three of our first four under JT but still everyone knew Hayne had already proven himself, even in a team getting beaten.
It's a two way street - you say that the kids can't show it in a team that is out of form. That's partly true, but Hayne immediately showed us that it is not entirely true. On the other hand, part of the reason we couldn't find form is that we didn't have those kids to come in and fill the gaps left in a team that was underperforming.
But like I said, I'm not bagging anybody out. We have some juniors with a helluva lot of potential but a lot of people seem to think that it's a given that they will fire for us next year when it is far from it.
Without Morrison, Morris, Stringer, McKinnon, Widders, O'Dwyer, Delaney etc all gone and Timmy not having had a good 80 minute game all through 06, we aren't gonna be a side that comes out and fires straight off the bat. We will probably have teething problems at the beginning of the year and suffer from poor early form. Which puts us in a somewhat similar situation to the beginning of this year.
So why does everyone seem to think that these kids are gonna do the job next year when they couldn't in a struggling team this year? Will it just take time? If so, we've had plenty of time for the kids to step up this year, work their early niggles out and become important first graders - yet nothing of the sort has happened with the exception of Hayne.
Quite simply, the progression of our juniors into the first graders we will need them to be is not as cut and dried as so many people seem to think it is.