Choc Ice wrote:
Appreciate the actual response that some people seem incapable of.
I'm suspicious how good a lot of people would think he is if we didn't have French and Field scoring and creating tries for fun.
We had some of that criticism of Harry Smith for a bit.
Also Sam Powell was good at these effort areas, maybe not as good, but I believe he got a lot of stick and people called for more attacking hookers.
…but we do have Field and French, so I’m not sure what the point it.
Each player brings their own individual parts to a team effort.
If you don’t see what he brings to the team and what he does to allow Field and French to do what they do then again, I’m guessing you don’t fully appreciate the game fully.
More importantly for O’Neil, we have Smith who does the bulk of the organising which allows O’Neil to get us into the right areas of the pitch to set up the plays and provide a high level damaging effort role in the middle both sides of the ball, which whilst Powell has in style in reality they are not in the same league as O’Neils ability to do this.
I’d actually say Field and French are lucky to have him doing what he does in the middle creating fatigue and slowing down the slide defence which creates space on the edges for the likes of them and others in the team to exploit.
Like I said earlier it’s not all about who puts the ball down over the goal line, just like Leeming who generally comes on once O’Neil has softened up the middles.
