Is there an overseas player quota space for Navarette? Specialist props - Fifita, Green, Arona, Tangata, Aydin. Hopefully Eddie Battye will sign a 3 year Super League contract and Last may know of a Hull squad player looking for a SL opportunity which could take the squad to 7 specialist props. Brad Fash or Matongo possibly? Only played a handful of games last season... https://www.superleague.co.uk/player/24 ... he-matongo If not then promising Jack Teanby at York may be tempted with a 2 year SL contract rather than the 1 year deal in the Championship with York... https://yorkcityknights.com/club/teanby ... cruitment/

Is there an overseas player quota space for Navarette? Specialist props - Fifita, Green, Arona, Tangata, Aydin. Hopefully Eddie Battye will sign a 3 year Super League contract and Last may know of a Hull squad player looking for a SL opportunity which could take the squad to 7 specialist props. Brad Fash or Matongo possibly? Only played a handful of games last season... https://www.superleague.co.uk/player/24 ... he-matongo If not then promising Jack Teanby at York may be tempted with a 2 year SL contract rather than the 1 year deal in the Championship with York... https://yorkcityknights.com/club/teanby ... cruitment/

Not sure he counts on quota being French and federation trained

So is battye a bit short then..st 5ft 10 what bout arona he only 2 cm taller

No but we’ve seen him, there have been a lot of stout props who’ve done well just not so much for us. Hell if he’s good enough I’m happy, Belly and JT were good enough. I suppose we’ve got used to these seven foot monsters.

Also tbf it’s taken Battye ten years to get to SL standard, it takes a lot for a smaller man to make it, you really have to be hard as nails. I’ve not seen this lad so I couldn’t really comment either way.

I’ll leave that up to the coaching staff.

You did only seem to mention his height though i dont know nothing bout this lad and not saying hes could be good for us just dont think height comes into it hence battye only small as is arouna.the gamble for me is he good enough for sl we had championship players who have gone well but some that aint but like you say its up to coaches fo decide who right for us and in our budget

You’ve not been on this forum long. Some posters on here have branded much bigger players ‘midgets’ so there is some history. His lack of inches won’t go down well with some.

All the same I stand by the point that smaller forwards need to be a cut above to handle the bigger players. He may be spot on for all I know but when you go down the tick list for a prop he’s on the small side. It’s not prejudice it’s physics. You know the saying, the bigger the are the harder the fall, well I tend to believe the other version, the bigger they are the harder they hit.

So maybe he is up to the job but I suspect it’s academic tbh.

Graham who went back to Saints last year after playing most of is career in Ozz did not do bad for a small prop

James Graham is 6’2’’ ! Ive heard the saying ‘what’s a couple of inches between friends’ but that’s pushing it a bit. Graham is a much bigger player. In fact when I started watching the game Graham would have been very tall indeed for a prop and 5’10 more the average. Now 6’2’’ is more the average, times move on.

So sorry to upset the midget liberation brigade but like it or not 5’10’’ is small for a prop, there isn’t really an argument here that’s FACT.

Whether a small prop can be any good that’s down to the player, so yes they can be.

Sorry Alegend but Graham was a terrible example.

Paul Gallen that’s a better example of smaller man made good.

Being a prop more than any other position except maybe hooker is about attitude.

All the same, I can't see how anyone can deny size and height is an advantage.

There are a number of subtle advantages but the best description I heard was from an Aussie.

He called it meat hanging, nice!

What he meant was that a player like Fifita who has a big frame can carry more muscle and fat but at the same BMI as a similar shorter player. So whereas Fifita can comfortably carry 18 and a half stone at 6'4'', Teanby, for example, at 5'10'' (6 inches shorter) will be happy at about 17 stone max.

In the collision that is a huge power advantage to Fifita, times that by 20 hit-ups and at least 20 tackles in a game it's not hard to see who's going to suffer more attrition.

As we've seen with Dave, when his attitudes wrong his size advantage is almost useless but when it's right he's virtually unstoppable. With the best will in the world, I can't see Teanby or most other smaller props matching that, There are exceptions, there are always exceptions but it would be a big gamble, in this case, that Teanby is the exception. Attitude can only take you so far.

Vastman thanks for putting me right he always looked smaller than other props on the park so thought he was under 6ft thanks

I'm not sure why you are both pushing the point so hard.
I don't think anyone doubts that a good big one will always beat a good little one, but there are so many examples of big ones that coaches have trusted only to find that size is all they had.
I'd rather judge props on delivery first rather than size.

Smaller props just play a different role. If you are 5'10 you don't run at the line like Fifita and your work rate needs to be higher but there are plenty of examples of players who do that.
You can't go with all small props. You won't get out of your 10 metre area. But you can't go with all big either.

So I'd prefer to judge them on what they do and how it compliments the team rather than just judging on size.

Well, I'm not if it's me you mean, it's called a debate, this is a forum isn't it? What confuses you about that?

We don't use our props to get out of our 10 m area, it always seems to be the job of the 3/4's