It’s a littler more difficult one to solve that it looks on the surface.
The priority issue for his development is less about the grade and more about him playing outside a dominant half.
He is a running, creative 5/8. My opinion of what he needs … in order of priority is:
1. He needs a dominant half to free him up to be a creative, running 5/8 (less load will equal better/faster development)
2. He needs consistency in the team around him. Halves are a ‘high social’ position (it interacts highly with other roles). In old language this translates to he needs the time to build combinations
3. He needs game time
The rub for the coaches at the moment is, state cup is struggling. It doesn’t have a dominant half. The team also changes a lot due to our youth policy and our struggles in first grade.
It’s most likely that Latu would take 10-12 weeks to build some kind of minimum combination even if state cup was stable.
So instead the coaches have him focused on settling into how the first grade team plays. They partially achieve 1. above with Seizer or Api at half.
From here he will probably get more game time. This week will be
1. Bula
6. Latu
7. Api
9. Tallin
