I will buy into this one by saying that players including Moltzen, Ayshford and Dwyer came from the Under 20's and in my opinion are not yet up to NRl standard week in and week out. Sure they have their moments but you can see they are tentative and lack confidence. I believe they should serve their apprenticeship in the State Cup. Davis and Pritchard are confident footballers and have done that and have outplayed recognised NRL players encountered this year, both will handle the step up.
The league should go back to having Reserve and Third grade It is too big a step for young players to come out of the Toyota Cup into First Grade, not many handle it successfully.
I agree, would be great to go back to the three grades on any given game day. That won't make any difference though as NRL coaches aren't forced to select players from the NYC. Look at the Dogs for example. They have basically a NRL team playing in State Cup and use those players when needed. They even put Barba in State Cup rather than NYC to harden him up. People really need to put the NYC into perspective, it's a Jersey Flegg competition. Not many players graduated from Flegg straight to NRL in the past. It comes as no suprise that after two years of the NYC the NRL is considering changing the age restriction and also looking at ways of improving the NSW Cup.
Sheens and his staff watch enough State Cup games to know what these players can and can't do. For some reason (which is beyond me) it seems they have seen reason not to select the likes of Pritchard, Akeripia Davis, Gower and Farlow etc.
McDonnell at the Wests AGM this year stated that Akeripa signed a new two year deal with the club. It was also rumoured during the year that Pritchard was close to putting pen to paper. We still have not heard anything official though. No idea why.
