Kevin Turvey wrote:
I'm not a fan of Russell but he does return a kick well assuming he doesn't knock it on. But that isn't really what I want from a winger. I want someone who is great under a high ball in attack and defence - Russell isn't. I want someone who can break a tackle and get away from the defence - Russell can't. I want someone who can create excitement and beat a man - Russell can't. I want someone who can score 15+ tries a season even with poor service - the good wingers can manage to do this - Russell can't.
He tries hard and I can't fault his work ethic but that isn't enough for a team that wants to be higher than the middle 8's.
Russell can break a tackle and get away from the defence. He does it every week. He did it at a hugely crucial time in the game on Friday.
I can’t find stats from last year for some reason but in 2016 he made 81 tackle busts and made 1979 metres.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think he’s a great player. I don’t think any of our outside backs (maybe bar Goodwin) are great specialists for their position and could all be replaced with far greater quality quite easily. But the amount of stick Russel gets is unwarranted and is just one of those lazy, easy scapegoat, situations.
I think Ratchford is too quiet and doesn’t organise the defence enough, he isn’t a good defender, he’s poor at bringing the ball off the line and is lazy and makes silly mistakes. I think Atkins is sometimes brain dead, and he can’t pass. I think Lineham is positionalky questionable in defence and attack and is also sometimes brain dead making stupid mistakes. None of the three are specialists of the position they play in our team. Two are out of position (Ratchford and Atkins) for me and Lineham has only played the game a short amount of time. They are all as good or bad at their positions as Russell (who isn’t a winger by trade neither) is for me, whether they are all better all round players is another matter.
For me I’d have Ratchford at centre or loose and have a proper specialist full back brought in. I’d have Atkins in the back row as he’s a good defender and a good runner of the ball and replaced at centre by Ratchford or a specialist. Then you could replace our two wingers with most wingers in the league who had played there since U10s rather than a few years.
I also think we’ve nearly got as many holes in the pack. I have no idea how Westwood is still here, I think he’d struggle to get into Championship teams. Ratchford or Atkins should have his place in the back row. Our props are slow and don’t have blistering power, we hardly ever see any tackle busts from our props.
The whole squad is lacking quality and specialism and certain qualities. I’d argue only Currie and Clark would get into any team and the whole rest of the squad is fairly average (I’ll wait a little while before seeing how good Goodwin and Roberts are, they may well be two others).
There’s a reason why we’ve had two poor seasons in the last three (one good one being when all the decent sides had injuries or lost the plot). It’s not because we have great players all over the pitch. It’s because our long term building of the squad, recruitment, selling or ending contracts, since the superstar team of 2010-2013 left, has been haphazard at best, poor in reality.
