Regardless of whether Inglis plays fullback or centre he'll still be challenging our right side defence a lot IMO. There really just aren't many options unfortunately. Lyon cbf, ridiculous rules prevent us from selecting Whare, Idris (who would've been so perfect) has taken some sort of personal leave and Lafia despite being good just isn't on the radar at all. We've got Hopoate, Wighton and Walker.. three young centres who I really like, especially the first two, but they've got issues. It's not the right time to be picking any of them. I'd be picking McManus, Richards or Gordon on the wing and then rolling with Wighton or Hoppa in the centres and hoping for the best, but I hope Hoppa ends up on the wing just to make sure Taufua and Mansour don't end up there. I'm really frightened of that.
I think there's more chance of Dugan just playing centre or wing actually. He's playing centre tonight for St George.
Im actually quite interested in how he fares tbh. Without so much time to try and think about what to do with the ball in his hands, he might actually let the ball go to his outside men.
I actually think, a bit like Hoffman actually, Dugan would be a lot more comfortable in backline sweeps if he was a bit wider. I also think he's a strong enough defender for it.
I reckon he's going to have a tendency to jam in on the inside man tbh. Technique and strength wise he'll be fine, skeptical about his decision making, don't think he'll have enough trust in his inside men.
Genuinely interested to know your reasons behind this. Don't really know much about Chambers, but in the few games I've seen Gagai play this season, his defense has been questionable at best.
Yeah I do agree with this. Being a good defensive centre requires experience as much as it does ability. He's got the skills and anticipation to be a good defensive centre but he's never really done it before so he'll make wrong decisions. It's exactly why I've never outright advocated Brett Stewart to play on the wing for NSW: I would've done so if NSW were a club side that had a whole pre-season of training and 24 games of development throughout a season but as it was it was just too much of a risk.
Gagai, much like Hopoate, has defensive issues. So does Chambers though, to an even bigger extent.. as do all your potential outside back replacements. This is the (only) reason I've avoided saying Slater should be dropped; sure Inglis is a much better fullback than he is a centre (and Slater in general) but Slater for all his over-ratedness is a far better player than any other outside back Queensland would bring in to replace Inglis after Inglis replaced Slater. Gagai has by far the most class in attack and I don't think it's a coincidence that all of Newcastle's players have simultaneously turned shit this season; it's not a reflection on many of them individually IMO.
Both Tate and Hodges pretty religiously refuse to play left side, but even aside from that their wing depth is as terrible as their centre depth.
Is it GG for Milford too then? If Barba wasn't playing like a bagfull of arseholes I'd pick him ahead of moving Inglis TBH.
I have no idea what GG means but Milford's free to play because he pulled out of the Test this year. For this exact reason pretty much.
Thing with Gagai; he doesn't make a defensive errors when the Knights are marked up and rearely when 1 short. Chambers however deadset takes the wrong man just about everytime the attack heads in his direction.
