Geez where does this guy find the time ?

And to prove what exactly ??

You are of course a much bigger man than any of us G1!!! Why do you have this persistent need to continue proving so ....to the detriment of what was a healthy debate (again) ?

With ref to the photo....perhaps somebody can please give me the definition of being pathetic, childish ....and thus hypocritical in their riposte

The bottom line is that as a very recent Australian captain, and the best hooker of his generation in Australia before being usurped only in the last season or so by Cameron Smith, we should be expecting a heck of a lot from Buderus. He ought to be as influential as Trent Barrett was for Wigan just to give an example. As far as I can tell he's not.

Agreed. He has certainly not set Super league alight like was expected. He's had some good games, and been far from poor, but he's not lived up to the expectation. I'm not sure why this is. Could be:
Age catching up with him
only getting 40mins a game, in20min bursts
SL not being that far behind NRL
Combination of the above

So after all the bluster of folk defending him it does actually turn out that he was, in fact, a waste of money. An unnecessary signing, just like i've said all along and you've all been wasting your breath defending him.

No, not at all. I don't think he's been a waste of money. Without knowing what money he's on I don't think we can quantify it, though granted he'll be on a fair amount. He's certainly not been so expensive he's stopped us assembling our strongest squad in recent years. I'm alson not sure we'd have been better spending the cap money in another position, as our pack has good depth, and any additions to our backs would leave us wuith too many numbers, also wasting money.

Just because he's not ripped SL apart doesn't mean he's not been a good signing for us. I think he's improved our options from dummy half, he's brought aggression and impact in defense, and at times he's been a pleasure to watch.

I'd be interested to see whether the club offer him another deal, that would be an indication of how well the people who matter rate his time over here.

On the topic I think most of the failures in the situation (and I accept that there are some) are in the system/squad balance rather than the player himself. I don't think that having both Diskin & Buderus in the 17 has worked well. On their own, each are good hookers who can play the 80, together it just doesn't quite click for me. Now whether that has had longer term benefits is something I have considered this morning. Having each only play 40 mins a week allows them both to be fresher at the business end, when they need to be at their most influential.

He's not even had a tenth of the influence on us that Barrett had at Wigan.

You've quoted it again meaning I had to read the gibberish it put. Please desist.

I think you've gone a little DISA and gone way over the top there but you are generally right that the amount of influence he has had has not matched that of other players with similar profiles. Reason for this for me include:
* Position - although an important position, I don;t think Hooker has nearly as much impact / influence as a halfback, with much of the work coming off the dominance of the rest of the team.
* Game time - with roughly 50% of gametime I don't think many players can have a huge impact.
* Compare the Leeds team with the Wigan team of the time (which was a shambles), Buderus is an extra cog in a very efficient and smoothly running machine. Barrett was at times the only cog at Wigan with the right number of teeth on it

I'm not sure thats the case. If your having both Buderus and Diskin in the 17 its a fine balance. You need to get as much out of them as you can, but are limited to only 1 position on the pitch, otherwise someone has to play out of position.

I understand that, but surely an element of pragmatism would apply? I.e. if one of the hookers was way, way more effective than the other I'd guess that the coach would give them more game time, particularly in view of the way we've struggled to win games this season.

On a purely playing perspective then maybe, but the squad are not robots, and good team spirit, and firendship is as important as playing ability

Not a fair comparison at all given the contexts. If he was at Castleford playing as the main man and not having an impact, then you could compare the two.

This thread has certainly provided plenty of supporters willing to provide Buderus plenty of leeway for his underwhelming performances.

I bet Matt Diskin and other non glamorous Aussie players wished they enjoyed this kind of grace from our fan base.