A core role of a #8 -- perhaps
the core role -- is providing go-forward. Something Whitelock is unmitigatedly terrible at providing. As per Fox Sports...
View attachment 10537
Thus far he's averaging 4 metres a carry and has generated one -- yes, one -- break. The Highlanders would probably get better production by sticking Ben Smith there. On the other hand, all of the other serious contenders for the backup #8 position average over 5 metres a carry and have generated 19-24 breaks each.
Of course, you could point out that there's a discrepancy in the minutes played between the players which will impact their stats -- m/carried aside. Fortunately, through
accepting Jesus into our hearts the magic of a spreadsheet basic stats, we can normalise them and calculate contributions per 10 minutes of offence (and defence) played, yielding the following...
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The part we're interested in here are the numbers under offence (CARRY, MATRES, BREAK). Just in case it's not clear, the tables says that for every 10 minutes of offence played, Whitelock can be expected to make 2.65 carries, making 10.76 metres. Ioane, 2.23 carries & 14.80 metres. Frizell, 3.31 carries & 16.84 metres, etc... As we can see, Whitelock is well and truly lagging behind Ioane, Savea and Frizell in terms of generating metres and breaks. Though he does try hard, as evident by his carries per 10 minutes. Perhaps some sort of sticker for effort is in order.