I agree that he could be fitter but someone that is lazy doesn't work at losing a couple of stone, which he did after his injury when he first joined us. And someone who I class as lazy would not put their hand up and play over 50 consecutive games. Ok in the majority he only did small minutes but when asked to did the longer minutes for the team.

In it's simplistic form the point is to score more points than the opposition and Mose with his block-busting runs near the line and quick play the balls score a few and contributes to a lot of try's. If he is capable of doing this near the line you need to surround him with other players that are capable of getting you into this position so he can carry out his role. He is never going to do 40 plus tackles a match but a team full of 40+ tackles a match are never going to score many points and thus not win many matches. You need a balance in a team and although in many peoples books Mose maybe marmite I don't think we would have won last season's grand final without him. I think he has gone off the boil since announcing he signed for St George but he is not on his own when it comes to players leaving & packing their bags early but I feel he is a big game player and I hope when it comes to the play offs that Mose is named on the bench for Saints.

Part of the problem of us not getting good yardage has been our poor and repetitive style of play. Pushing everything up the middle on drop off passes has been easy to defend against.



We did look better, but we were also shifting the ball wider more often and better. That created gaps in the middle for our big forwards to make breaks and half breaks. I'm not sure that the lack of yardage in the pack has just been down to individual players.

Masoe tends to gets a pass from most because he does tend to show in big games and people remember him rattling players. I don't think his stats are great and some of that will be down to him, but I do also think he's been used poorly at times. Last year, when he needed to do big minutes (generally in games when we carried injuries) he did them.

Comparing Masoe and Walmsley is silly. They are two completely different players with radically different physical builds.

Masoe is, what, 21, 22 stones?

How many forwards do you know who top out at a similar weight as Mose and do the same work as Alex Walmsley?

And before Mose's weight is used as a stick to beat him - yes. When he arrived he was clearly overweight. Right now he's close to optimum. He's certainly not failing his fitness obligation to the club.

20 stone apparently at 6"6 (and a half). Walmsley is 6"5 at nearly 18 stone. So admittedly I did get a bit giddy.

I doubt Mose is 20st. I used to think Mal Meninga was big but Masoe makes him look like a halfback. The guy is absolutely huge.

We shouldn't forget the difference in shape, too. Ask any sports fitness conditioner. They'll all tell you the same. Certain body shapes are more effective than others - depending on the role.

You only need look at their legs. Walmsley's are much longer with less of a cross-section. He has an absolutely enormous stride. Probably why he covers so much ground so quickly.

This is all about whether he deserves a place on the bench and although he is a bit of a fat pudding, on balance he is worth the bench place as he can offer something different if required during the game. Normally I would say that a 22 minute total mins player should be in the 17 but he can sometime do it for us.