Philbin is a home grown squad middle. I thought his efforts against KR were decent in defence, he came on and put himself about a bit.

Nobody is claiming he's a front row starting cert and he's not being treated like one. We'd be worse off without him in our squad IMO and in RL, depth of squad is vital.

Im saying that I think his performance over the past 4-5 years hasn't changed dramatically. But now he is competing against the likes of Vaughan, Harrison, Nicholson and Fitzgibbon for a place in the 17 and hence doesn't compare well. I don't think we will get much more out of him either. He is relatively small so needs to put in 120% effort when he comes on, so using him for shortish spells from the bench seems to be the best bet.

Good luck with the elbow. That can't be much fun.

Sentiment aside, I believe he can be improved upon, and we have plenty of youngsters who need a chance. He's had a good stint at the Wire in any case.

I'd like it such that we have another high quality prop on the interchange bench.

We would be worse off losing any squad player - by definition we have reduced the squad size. Not really an endorsement.

If he was an Aussie import I suggest most would be ambivalent about him.

So, home grown or not, the question to me is "Is Philbin the best player we can get in the #15 shirt for 2025 and beyond?"

I think Abe Forman mentioned two front rowers being the available front rowers before Bullock’s contract was extended.

Let’s assume these were Jack Brown and Sam Luckley seeking six figure per year contracts. Would Philbin be such a bad option then?

This is called The False Dichotomy Fallacy unless you are suggesting that our ONLY choice is/was constrained to Brown, Luckley or Philbin

We'd have been better off losing Matautia last year!!

Jesting aside, i hear what you're saying so looking at the available players next year, which one would you take over Philbs at 15 (and they'd be happy to be 15 and not 8 or 10). Genuine question, not facetious.

I don't know who is available now. I wanted McMeeken at the time and I believe he was available. Obviously need to factor in salary cap limitations but based on our exodus of players I would have thought we are significantly under the cap.

I take it we’re not sniffing around Amone? I’d like to think we were.