Re: Jamie Foster : Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:27 pm
The speedster days of Offiah and Preston are long gone. Cover defences are now so effective (in terms of player fitness, speed, stamina and organisation) that you need freakish speed to round the last tackler in the line. Had Offiah played today he'd finish with little more than half his end-of-season try total. Speed is a useful asset. But it's no longer the prime requisite. When Warrington chose to run with Kevin Penny in the first team they were thinking a decade behind the game. Now if you've got a winger who scores 12-15 tries a season whilst conceding little and another who scores twenty five but costs seven tries per year because of weak tackling and a sh!tload of territory because his hands awful you take the former every time. And if he also chips in with an 80% completion rate with the boot you bite his hand off.