Itchy Arsenal wrote:It’s not a key tactic when we are in the opposition half.
If it’s such a key tactic why don’t we sell Wardle offload Keighran and buy/develop 2 centres in the mould of King?
Hang on a minute we’ve just given Marshall a 4 year contract who would probably never get a decent pass from a centre whose main and potentially only attribute is to “make the hard yards”.
Let’s get back to having an Isa or a Bateman at centre.
I don’t dislike King I just dislike the one dimensional nature of the role he’s asked to play.
I’ve said for more years than I care to remember that centre play is probably the hardest position to play well in any rugby team. King is pretty decent in the hard yards bit but pretty lamentable with the more skilful side of the role and isn’t particularly well blessed with pace.
I believe that he’s on an exceptionally high value contract which would mean that if we had signed him then something elsewhere would have to give under the SC constraints. No improved contracts for Smith, Wardle, Havard etc.
3 losses, admittedly 3 shallackings, seems to have led in some quarters due to King going back to Wire. I don’t for one moment put you in that group and I do recollect you saying that we may to consider changing tactics with the arrival of Keighran. King isn’t the reason for our recent downturn it’s a plethora of reasons that Peet, his huge backup support and the players have got to address and address very quickly if we want a top 2 place in the league.
Jesus sometimes you’re hard work, and I fully appreciate I can be too, its all well and good talking about what happenes in the opposition half but King was one of if not the key reason we were winning the field position battles.
It’s great talking about what happened in the opposition half but it doesn’t matter if you don’t consistently get there.
Marshall and Miski are excellent at this also again they contribute massively to the field position cause but it’s noticeable Miski isn’t having the same effect as he’s not running off Kings contact and quick play the balls.
It’s often said by coaches you finish sets how you start them.
We now have 2 centres who don’t make those hard yard runs, although Wardle has improved.
I would 100% guarantee all things being equal first option would have been to retain King if we could have made that deal happen, also there is less reliance on centres to pass to the wingers these days as the final pass more often comes from the fullback, having a centre that creates space too though is obviously an added bonus and Wardle is certainly one of those. If you want to claim otherwise then Miski scored 27 tries outside King and he only played for 3/4s of the season, he currently has 9 outside Keighran.
Also who is saying 3 losses has anything to do with King going back to Warrington, what people are identify is we are weaker for not having him, it’s been obviously that way all year. We have replaced one of our key metre makers out of our half with someone who can’t do it and we are playing the same way.
King is a huge miss this year, I do rate AK he was great at Catalans however he had the Wardle role there with others (Legurre sp) playing the grafters role. We need to support him more if we are going to get the best out of him though and change style we need more carries from his secondrow earlier in the tackle count, but again this is an issue given Isa would normally be the perfect player to slip into that role but is obviously out for the year.