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Tate - Foley the most unkown/inexperienced combination available. They are facing a massive uphill battle to play cohesively. Would love to be proven wrong.

What.

Yes. All that talk about his size and in the end when have Hooper or McReight ever really been dominated in close like in the examples of that analysis? I felt having him come on for a Leota or a Valetini in the last 20 and thereby actually decreasing our average size on the park was when we...

To play devil's advocate, many NZ pundits have been calling for the dropping of Cane at 7 for Savea to fill that role. Despite wearing 8 last match against us he was the smallest backrower according to Wikipedia, essentially playing 7 from the back of the scrum.

Perhaps they did...

Fine is relative to his net impact on the game which I agree has tended to the positive however my comment is in relation to the alternatives at starting 9 jersey. I do think White and McDermott have a greater upside atm. I'm especially confused as to why he is being selected ahead of White who...

Wright, Gordon, Holloway continued selection gets more and more baffling. Wilson and Porecki not improving their reputation either.

Is he too alike to Wright in that case?

R Rodda, Neville, Frost and Phillip sounds like a good group of locks right now

We are watching a good player in Swain sabotaging his own career.

I think Samu is a very, very good player but McReight gets metres past the gain line constantly and has an extremely effective linking and passing game. Samu would pleasantly surprise me if he was able to slow down the NZ attacking breakdown half as much.

Players like Beale, Hodge, Holloway, Leota, Samu and Petaia to an extent give us so much utility. We have available at a pinch 6 props, 3 hookers, 6 locks, 7 back rowers, 3 halfbacks, 4 pivots (including Hodge and Beale [i know]), 5 centres (including Beale), 6 wingers and 5 fullbacks. *EDIT*...

For this reason you'd think RA would push 7s (they did this with Viva 7s but I believe that fizzled out) harder to at least be in the fight.

3 Koroibete 2 McReight 1 Slipper

Agree strongly with this sentiment. Reliable service yes but no spark and at times slow. I think both Gordon and McDermott have more strings to the bow at this point of time which would apply more pressure to defences.

I thought the second one was inspired tbh and if Slipper had seen it coming was a good chance of scoring. He probably should have seen it given how much they've played together.

Opportunity for McDermott assuming he gets some time with JOC (James O'Connor).

6-2 bench I was not expecting given the versatility of Holloway, Leota, Samu but we have needed more at ruck and Paisami, Petaia, Wright and Hodge all cover multiple positions.

Yes, that would be the challenge to create two teams with no remnants of a previous identity assuming one is based out of Ballymore and uses Suncorp, and then to quickly endear the teams to supporters so that the lights stay on.

Definitely there is alienation from the city for many out west and north, undisputedly. However I see two issues in this specific scenario. One being that the Reds have always (as far as I know) represented the state and actually have done pretty well at outreach, especially recently, and two...