And relegate our best performing half back to a back up role.

What about Shaul. Do you lose him just to keep to some bang average aussie on your books?

There's room for both. Shaul is far from the finished article. His passing is little short of horrific, for starters. There may be times when his form dips and he needs a break from the first team. McDonnell can play wing as well, so provides cover.

Great idea.

That 'bang average Aussie' was the second best FB in the competition at the time of his injury.

According to who

OPTA.

Not only that but if Shaul gets injured guess who'd be the first one on here slagging the club off for not having cover!

The facts. As represented by OPTA stats.



I realise that you'll be incapable of giving him any credit so you might just want to duck out of this conversation to avoid embarrassment.

His missed tackle count and error count have been consistently awful going back seasons. Stats prove that.



Whether he was picked for GB or won club awards doesn't alter the stats you were so keen to highlight.



Plus certain stats can tell a confusing story. e.g. if a player drops 20% of passes but only receives 5 passes a game then his error count will be 1. But if he receives 15 passes a game the error count will be 3. Now it is well known that we used our left side attack (Manu, Yeaman & Briscoe) more than our right so Tickle didn't see so much of the ball.



Hence less errors in previous seasons and hence my main criticism of him been his missed tackles (or pathetic attempts at tackles).

I'd give credit where due but mcdonnel is average and given another off season shaul will offer more.

As for 2nd best full back in the league regardless of stats I'd take hardaker, grix, lomax, tomkins, hodgeson and hanbury all before him and regardless of his faults I wouldn't swap eden for him either. Apologies if ive missed any other better fullback out.

Oh well - I did offer you the opportunity. Now you've gone and made yourself look daft.