Quote: Shifty Cat "If I remember rightly he'd only been here 2 weeks, so it's not that much of a surprise he wasn't up with some of the others but imo there was enough there that once he was fully match fit he'd make some serious meters in the Championship as you say.
My main point though was comparing the 2 new props with the stats that got posted, since apart from that boxing day runout and some highlights we don't know that much about either. It was a bit of a surprise even though they play differently they had surprisingly similar stats across the board, obviously you can only take so much out of them but they were both pretty impressive.
Agree with Boothroyd, wasn't looking out for him at first but there's no doubt he caught my eye. I don't know how long he'd been in the Country at that point but he was fit and ready to go. Looking forward to seeing Bain and Vagana hopefully in one of these warm-ups before the season starts and then we'll really know what kind of pack we've got on our hands.'"
Yep I think Caleb was the last to arrive which is why I didn’t said it didn’t mean much.
I think there is a belief that all Aussie RL players are these supercharged highly trained full time athletes - they are not.
Outside of the top flight they have jobs and train when they can. The club training is not FT and probably on a par with somewhere like Dewsbury. It’s certainly not what they will get with us which is basically SL.
I’m guessing Boothroyd may be different in that he was until recently part of the Aussie equivalent of a FT Academy? If so I think it showed in his fitness and eagerness.
Caleb and Bain have been playing part time footy and good though it is, it’s not SL standard. Fitness is down to the player mainly and some train and live better than others. Both will benefit hugely from a FT environment. I expect Vagane to be the same and I expect them to hit form at the Galway point of the season.
Exactly what happened with Atoni.