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On a serious note, his skillset is not overly transferable or valuable in Union - his primary attribute as a winger is a strong carry that he provides early in sets to get his team momentum, and is okay at finishing in limited space (all wingers in league are good at this now though to be fair)...

Hamish Stewart has a blinder once every season too.

He was signed as a 'marquee' player and is paid/ expected to perform at that level. All these other players were signed with the expectation to be average.

Following this logic, you do understand that teams in this new 'National Domestic Competition' would have a significantly smaller salary cap than the existing structure? It's 'heaps more money' spent over 'heaps more teams'. Australia already struggles to retain its best players - effectively...

Can you imagine how poor the quality of games/ players would be if we had to fill 8-10 teams? Who would want to watch it?

Godwin has shown little development or improvement from his considerable time in Super Rugby - at least Foketi may have upside.

To be fair they are all probably squad players at best but Timani and Foketi are the most perplexing. Timani is adequate at set piece but suffers from Jack Whetton- syndrome across the park. Foketi isn't even a guaranteed starter in the 2021 Waratah's team and is consistent in his ability to do...

Absolutely - if the Australian teams were winning games things would be very different.

It’s received absolutely minimal media attention/ hype- it’s not surprising no one is watching it (let alone know of its existence!)

Are we being too generous with all this talk of potential though? For every linebreak/ positive contribution the like a Jack Maddocks or Lakai Foekti make, they also support that with a multiple of missed tackles, shit passes and general poor play. Even looking at our attack, we hardly score...

I guess because being ‘ok’ or ‘competitive’ in Super Rugby TT should not be the threshold for getting a Wallabies jumper (although I’m pretty sure BR had a different view of Powell when he were a predominantly white jersey..)

There are a quite a few sympathetic posters around this place willing to accept continued mediocrity (where it's not justified). I accept that there may be limitations around recruiting good second-rowers as they are somewhat of a rare breed around Australia; athletic outside backs are...

There's also probably 40 better athletes running around the fringes of NRL ;). It all comes down to talent identification and recruitment.

Taqele N was a horrendous defender and his workrate was considerably worse than Mark's. I doubt he will ever be a great (or even good) defender but as long as there are marginal improvements and he actually becomes an attacking weapon - that's good enough.

He's a very decent Shute Shield player but at best should be depth for a Super Rugby franchise. The fact he is starting and close to the captaincy is a sad indictment on the Waratahs.

A tackle shy back is acceptable (even lauded) if their attacking game is top tier - I don't think he's anywhere near the level to accept the compromise.

If we're talking about Wells then surely Newsome is worth a mention.

No one at the Waratahs has any top-end speed so he's not alone in the regard. His other weakness (apart from tackling) is this absolute obsession to carry the ball in one hand and try to offload in every single tackle, which generally results in either a poor pass or the opposition ripping the...

Foketi’s decision making in defence is consistently bad (as is Perese’s to be fair).

It would be interesting to compare the average professional career of an AFL/ Union/ NRL player - I'm pretty certain that AFL absolutely trumps when it comes to short careers and churning through players.