I`m not sure who that was too, with the opinion i gave i didn`t put him down. What i said is he`s a solid centre but basically nothing out of the ordinary, its horses for courses with the type of player that people like to watch.

I was a fan of the likes of Alan Bateman and Jonathon Davies, i also appreciated Joe Ropati and the Keith Senior style of centre play. I just don`t see Chris Bridge as anywhere near the above standard or anywhere in between the above styles. To win or get to grand finals you need some cutting edge out wide especially at centre as you won`t avoid any of the big 2 like you can in the challange cup, in the challenge cup you can get away with it a bit more because of the format.

Its like with Matt King, he lacks a lot of centre skills through no fault of his own as he was converted to centre by one of his previous clubs, he`s technically a winger thats been playing in the centres, it worked for Melbourne due to them over loading the channels with class players like Slater, Inglis and Cronk so King wasn`t needed as a techincally creative centre, more often than not he was the power at the end of a move.

My point was aimed at the centres in general, i just don`t see a lot of natural creativity with King and Bridge, one is a winger that got converted to a centre and the other is just fairly solid rather than being spectacular, this is why i hope Ryan Atkins can turn out to be our destructive centre as like i said earlier in thread the teams that have shared the silverware during the modern era have had at least one dangerous centre that teams fear with ball in hand.

Like Mark said, its probably best to give Chris Bridge a full season in a starting position and see how he goes. I hope Chris Bridge turns out to be something great for us because at the end of the day you just want to see us winning and winning trophies.

I take your point Rob. I know where you're coming from, he's not yet a week in week out 'match winner', but his career [touch wood] is on the way up, he looks fitter, more focused, more comfortable with his game than he has done before and hopefully he'll continue to progress, and progress at the same rate he did last year.

I think in all honesty, he was a little undervalued last year by most, he played a lot of games, was pretty consistant and breached the gap of losing a GB centre to a point where you never felt we 'missed Gleese'. He'll look back at 2009 as probably the best of his career to date, and I don't think we've seen the best of him yet.

According to whom? He started his Storm career at centre, moved out to the wing for a around a dozen games, then played out the rest of his Storm career at centre.

In 2004, playing on the wing, he featured in 24 games and scored 16 tries. Thats before he became a centre at Melbourne.

Considering he debuted in 2003, at centre, I would say 2004 is rather moot.

Bridge is out of his depth internationally but in SL he's solid and dependable and his interchangability makes him a valuable player for the wire.
I like Bridgey, rarely puts a foot wrong