Right, lets not turn this into a Hicks bashing thread but he has changed something in his play this year that i cannot work out and hopefully one of you knowledgable people might be able to shed some light for me



Time after time this year i have seen him take the ball a few yards out from the try line and as the defensive line is moving out to him he comes infield and takes the tackle. Obviously i dont want to see him getting put in touch several times a game but watching a few games lately there have been times that he has ended up held up in the tackle where as a low dive towards the line would have been suffiant to get him over and put the points on the board.

any thoughts?

Yep, seen the same thing from him this season, he does tend to come inside way too often.
Some times it works of course, such as the try against Wakey (I believe), however it now seems to be his default setting!

Maybe we just expect more this season? (now we know how good he is)

Sometimes it does work, am not having a dig at him i just couldnt understand it. It worked for the last try on sunday against Celtic for example but i do like to see a winger making a dive for the line.

Some teams do it really well, for example Saints, the amount of times i have seen gardner (?) on the wing squeeze in just avoiding the corner flag it it makes for entertaining rugby. We used to do it, I remember seeing Henry Fa'fili doing it a lot but it seems to have gone from our game in the last year or two

it's known as the "reverse samson effect",he grows a girls haircut and it directly affects his game.
short,back and sides and normal service will be resumed.

So the reverse for King? Not quite girls haircut but when he arrived he had big hair and played ok, shaved it off and was pants for a while, not he seems to be growing it back and is starting to hit form

I don't think that there has been the high quality ball put out for him that much this season. Give him decent ball and he will squeeze in at the corner. He is a natural try scorer and he hasn't lost that.

I feel at times the ball goes to him with nothing really on, so he has to step inside rather than going straight into touch. He is good enough to make this work for him and is still scoring.

i put to down to him been not confident with his pace to go on the outside and beat the man he did on sunday cut inside when the outside opition would have resulted in a try

The only problem i have with Chris Hicks is what i pointed out at the time when we signed him which is a lack of out and out pace, with Matt King on one wing and Hicks on the other we are not the quickest on the outside so it restricts the sort of range that we are capable of scoring tries from.

Where Chris Hicks is excells is close to the opponents line, he has nimble footwork and strength and normally he is a decent one on one defender but he is prone to anyone with pace taking him on.

I agree with you.

What happened to the stories of his 10.74 sec 100m stuff.

Serious question Rob, and everyone else really, but you in particular Rob,

Q1. Is Chris Hicks a better finisher than the much maligned Henry Fa'afilli ?

A1. For me, no, I thought Henry was better, he took half chances better. Got the ball down in seemingly impossible situations etc.

Q2. Who would you rather have ? (Assuming we had another recognised kicker, so it was contribution based on winger v winger)

A2. Tough call, for me, Hicks just I think. I'm kinda torn, Hicks because he has better value out of acting half, better workrate, also in theory he must be quicker etc. I just felt Fa'afilli was underrated, he had that tryscoring ability but you have to factor in that Riley, Reardon, Hicks etc have all done well outside Gleeson. It's a tough one, Hicks just.

Discuss.

Thinking about it, they are smiler players in regards to weighing up the pro's and con's, for me Hicks just edges it because i thought Henry messed about to much i.e, silly steps, running sidewards and his inability to pick up a rolling ball.

Personally i think question 1 is hard to answer for the following reason, when Chris Hicks first arrived he was scoring tries for fun and i would say at that time he was a far better finisher than Fa`afili, what changed is Chris Hicks got messed about a bit in having to move to fullback along with taking on the kicking duties so he had a lot more responsibility.

If you left Hicks to be an out and out winger with Gleeson on form and as his regular partner then i think Hicks would be the better finisher, what Hicks hasn`t benefited from like Fa`afili did is an on song Lee Briers with pin point accurate kicking to the right wing. Lee Briers is now 3/4 years older since the Fa`afili days and his form had been in regression for a fair while now up and till showing a bit os sparke against the bottom of the table side at the weekend.

Question 2, Hicks for me as the better all round winger.

Hicks all day every day! henry was a one trick pony

I'm undecided. Earlier last year i would have said Hicks when he seemed to be scoring tries for fun but i dont know. I rated henry and as i said earlier in this thread i was always impressed with his tries in the corner. As others have mentioned this may have just been because he had more support.

Hicks will be good for us and i can see when the team start to settle he will scoring easily again.

I'm undecided, i'm tempted to say 'a mix of the two' but I hate it when folk do that.

He looked pretty nippy in his Manly days, but I'm sure he had quite a serious injury before he moved here, I wonder if that's affected him at all?

He does look a little slower and weaker this year, though.

yes but that '1 trick' was scoring tries

I get you, but I'd also point out that Henry scored plenty of tries from left & right centre when plonked there, plenty. I don't think we gave him the credit for the ability he had.

What de finish with ? Circa (total guess) 74 in 95 something like that. Up there with the best.

beat me to it, garrrr.

pmsl

Towards the end of his stay at Wire, he developed into a very good attacking centre. I reckon if he was still here he could still be playing centre now.
Just imagine:

FB
Hicks
Gleeson
Fa'afili
Penny
...

He played the GF with a sprained ankle. I do agree he looks slighter than he did last year, as was mentioned in an article in the press recently.

As stated elsewhere, the threequarters have been msessed around with even though we are only five games into the season. Let's see how he goes after half a dozen games in a settled back line.

Maybe it is a simple answer - maybe he is trying to get a better angle for his kick at goal?