Humour me. What is a "core skill"? Has Fa'amausili got all the core skills for his current position? Has he got any that are applicable to playing #8?
Billy Vunipola runs the ball back from a deep position and makes lots of metres, doesn't look all that skillful to me, surely that could be Pone.
Sure. Don’t get me wrong - I might be a bit forceful (and long winded) in my opinions, but always happy to chat rugby/hear someone else’s.
A big part of Fa’amausili’s development so far will have been around developing his scrummaging. Personally I thought he looked like that was coming along well. Work in progress, sure, but plenty of promise. He is selected in the squad as a prop and the Rebels clearly need him there so that won’t be changing this season at least. So all of his S&C work will be done around his position requirements.
At number 8 he would be required to cover far more ground. Be leaner, more athletic and quicker. It is preferable that they can be used as a jumper in the line out and they can control a ball at the back of the scrum.
Plenty of skills in general play are transferable. As you’ve pointed out he is already a strong ball runner. He’d only get better at it if that was the focus. His defence is good. But Props need to do that stuff too. It isn’t specific to backrowers - they just need to do lots more of it.
I’m not saying they couldn’t transform him if they really wanted to. Look at the work they did with Sam Burgess when they bought him across (incidentally he is the sort of example I was trying to think of of a player who they changed positions at senior professional level).
But why would you? At 23 he’s already a Wallaby squad member at prop. All of the investment has been to make him world class in that position and it’s working. If you move him to now (remembering it’s definitely not happening this year) you set him back at least 12 months, probably 2 years. He’s on an upwards trajectory now and he’s already done something of an apprenticeship in scrummaging as a THP - which is the key position specific issue at play.
Taking a guy who is 16-19 and re-casting him to let him fulfil his potential happens all the time and makes perfect sense to me. You are talking guys who are just starting out.
Likewise playing a guy who is Professional level out of position at a lower level works too - guys like Toutai Kefu & Radike Samo could play in the backs against lower level opposition because they had the cross over skills to make it work against lower opposition.
But once guys get to Super Rugby squad level there has already been significant levels of planning and training done around their positions. I’d guess most of them have already played at least 5-6 positions in juniors. Pro-coaches have done their analysis and put them in the spot where they can get best utility from them. There might only be subtle shortcomings if they are in a different spot, but they’ll get ruthlessly exposed at top level (eg LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) at 6 or most props playing on their non-preferred side).
The investment in Pone is going great. Why change tracks mid-stream? It makes no sense to me.
