fez1 wrote:
Yes - a real talent.
Looks like he's the sort that will keep his head down and keep on working and not let all this praise go his head.
He will at some point make mistakes and have a bad patch so I hope people don't start jumping on his back.
Yeah exactly, with young players we often get this overhype and then the player suffers from the backlash.
When Penny emerged, people were calling him "the new Offiah" after a handful of games. Penny didn't call himself Offiah, that was fans and media. But of course that provokes backlash because everyone wants to cut down a tall poppy, so as soon as he started to struggle it became the hipster thing to say "this lad might be able to run fast but he isn't a rugby player".
It wasn't just Penny...at other clubs Marcus St Hilaire, Leroy Rivett, David Hodgson all got a lot of hype when they broke out. Then teams start focusing on them and have film on them and it gets difficult. The real top players will get through it but it creates a layer of pressure for a young player that is not helpful. Penny went through a crisis of confidence not helped by the fact he got injured at the same time and the backlash to the hype was not helpful and probably damaged his career.