MorePlaymakersNeeded wrote:
Kidwell was a massive disappointment in the P&B
That's because we played him as a centre. He wasn't fast enough and was too flat footed to be effective there, but then when he went to the NRL he was played as a back rower and did well there.
Even in his time with us, you could see moments where he had potential. I remember us beating Wigan at Wilderspool and they really struggled to contain him, he was running at them like a battering ram, getting fast playtheballs and offloads away. In a lot of other games he looked cumbersome and having him as centre didn't suit the way we played back then, we seemed to play a lot of off-the-cuff stuff through Langer and Briers that relied on someone hitting a gap with speed, which was fine when it was Hunte or Kohe-Love but if it went to Kidwell he would slow moves down.
Ironically when Kidwell left his replacement at centre was Ben Westwood, and we had similar issues with him, for about three seasons, playing him as a centre or wing(!). When Cullen decided to put him in the pack he turned in to a star. I think if we'd kept Kidwell and done the same with him, he would have been similarly successful.
