DCE will depart in the next few years, and when he does, we will need to replace him. Some people think that we can't or won't be successful when that happens, but I disagree. As good as he is, we will be fine.
Bob Fulton departed in 1976... and while we didn't replace him with another immortal, we still won a premiership two years later.
Ben Kennedy departed in 2006... and while he was one of a kind, we still found an excellent replacement and won a premiership two years later... and another 3 years after that.
I personally like looking at a lot of statistical analysis, and this article was one of the best I'd seen.
Production, replacement level, wins above reserve grade, Taylors and Z score
www.maroonobserver.com
This line stuck out to me when they analysed "Wins above replacement rate", or in this case, "Wins above [a] reserve grade [player]" (WARG), which is a stat used pretty comprehensively across many sports. I think someone even used it on Napoleon Bonaparte to determine that he was the greatest general of all time.
Anyway, the article went through and analysed every player since 1999. It said this about DCE:
"A career with 6 WARG is good enough to be in the top 10% of all players with a NRLM appearance, and more than 19 is required to be in the top 0.5%. That is, in no particular order, Darren Lockyer, Matthew Bowen, Paul Gallen, Cameron Smith, Johnathan Thurston, Billy Slater, Robbie Farah, Benji Marshall, Cooper Cronk, Greg Inglis, Jarryd Hayne, Daly Cherry-Evans and James Tedesco at the end 2024."
Players from that list don't come along often. They are generational. When we lose DCE, we are going to lose a lot from him.
Also worth noting, is that when accounting by games played, so players with fewer games are included, Turbo is second only to Andrew Johns with his influence on games.
