Guess the big advantage in Stewart’s situation was having a reserve grade side for to come through and get a bit of a grounding first. Real shame in this situation that we don’t have that option for these young guys to get used to playing against bigger and harder bodies, and I suspect that is where Des would be extremely cautious with them at the moment too
For me, he probably doesn’t have the ceiling that these other guys do, but Funa really deserves his crack at it right now. Wasn’t expecting much, and it was a tough debut, but there is just something about him that to me shows he has a bit of natural ability in him and I’m happy to see him rewarded this week. A couple of standouts for me from him was his 1st game at centre he scored a try running a beautiful line, and the try where he threw a really nice last pass to get Taufua over as well
If I think back to how DCE was handled as well, Hodkinson was a pretty handy player, but DCE had more natural talent, and Des sent him to QLD Cup for a year to get him ready for NRL which gave him a very good base to enter first grade