OK. There's an elephant in this room that needs to be let out.
This is going to sound like sour grapes, and maybe a little of it is . . . but here goes:
Right here, right now, he just ain't as good as he thinks he is.
He ain't nowhere near as good as the media beat him up to be.
He might be in the future, but I once thought I might grow to 6ft tall when I was a kid. Don't even ask how that turned out for me 🤣
He might turn into a good player, but he ain't showing shit in terms of a superstar. Fittler, SBW et al ALL were playing consistent high level at his age and NRL experience.
They weren't slow. Or average defenders. Rarely made the wrong attacking decision. They weren't ball hogs. They didn't piss about wasting tackles by running across the field, or even worse, in circles.
He makes a lot of poor decisions during the game. Sure, he's a kid and he has talent . . . . but that's it.
he won't be in the halves for much longer, so he should really hope he bulks up . . . coz he'll get folded as a ball running lock.
If he does 9 good things during a game, he also does 6 or 7 crap things.
I'm sure Benji has been walking on egg shells so this kid doesn't get offended by having to play second fiddle to JL. You know, the bloke who's just come off 4 comps. I still think that Benji has told JL to hold back, and push it towards LG more.
We all said that Gal overplays his hand. Maybe we were too polite to also say he's a poor defender.
And that he's slow. And that he makes very poor decisions. And he crabs across field. And he's a hog. We might not have readily said that stuff because we were swept up in the gushing and glowing media appraisals of Galvin . . . and we got lulled into thinking we are getting the world's best player.
Well, now that he has shown us exactly what he thinks of our club and it's head coach . . . we don't need to protect his fragile ego any longer.
I see the reality of so many of his flaws . . . sure, they might disappear in 2, 4, 7 years . . . but right here, right now, all I hear is an elephant escaping this room.