NickyKiss wrote:
I've not seen the lad play but he'd have to be some player to be able to walk back in to rugby league after not playing it at professional level and not at all since he was about 13-14 to walk in to a Wigan side with a couple of players like Finch and Leuluai in the halfs.
He's need a minimum of 12 months in our U20's to be anywhere near ready.
The tragedy is that if he'd continued in League, he would probably have developed all the necessary skills and physical toughness. But as others have said, I now think it's a bit too late - particularly for the latter.
I can only comment on what I've seen of him on telly, but he now looks to me like just another of this endless procession of handsome plastikit halfbacks that England RU produce - similar to Rob Andrew, Johnny Wilkinson etc - all of whom were adequate at what they did, mainly kicking, finished every match without a hair out of place, would have struggled to get into a pro RL side, and yet still came to enjoy massive wealth and kudos. In which case, I don't suppose he'll think he's missed out on much.
But because of what he COULD have been, I still regard him as a loss to the game.
