Rumours and signings v8

Re: Rumours and signings v8 : Sun Jun 17, 2012 1:16 pm

AJ wrote:

I keep hearing people say this, but there are just as many of the mindset, of which I am one, that he simply isnt good enough and the chance to play wont change that, it will simply hurt our chances.

Maybe he won't be good enough but that still doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't the best option. You have to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the potential options.

Playing Russell at fullback means moving our best attacking player away from his best position and into the halves. It also means moving him to the right hand side where he's never been quite as effective as on the left.
It will have a big impact on our attacking moves which are mostly focused on getting the most out of Tomkins at fullback. From what I've seen of Russell his ability to join the attacking line still isn't quite right and his passing game is still very poor.
There is also Russell's pretty poor ability under the high ball that has been apparent on a few occasions and something that has drawn criticism from Hull fans. That issue has been with him in the under 20's and is something that can be easily targeted.

Playing Mellor might well mean playing someone who doesn't have a long term future at Wigan but he has done alright in his brief outings for the first team. He created a try and scored one against Widnes and defended fairly well when put under pressure. He's been playing behind a pretty poor Widnes pack most weeks which limits his chances in attack but one thing that is clear is that his biggest strength is his pinpoint accurate cross field kicks, something that Charnley and Gelling could benefit from. While playing for Widnes he's demonstrated some excellent cover tackling, making two or three try saving tackles in games that I've watched.
Most importantly it keeps Tomkins in his best position and allows the team to keep that devastating attacking combination down the left hand side.

In his final year at Wigan Paul Deacon's role was effectively putting out very simply passes and some attacking kicks. He didn't do much long kicking, he wasn't really responsible for sending out any crucial passes and his defence was also pretty terrible. In theory Mellor should at least be able to match that level of input.