I think Bula is terrific as a fullback. We are a well beaten side every week and he still comes up with stuff and makes plays. I'm surprised he's criticised for effort. I'd say it's more inexperience that does him sometimes but look at him tackling in the defensive line on our goalline and his desperation around that. Just really harsh to criticise his play when he so often makes the big catch under pressure. He is capable of getting down field whenever we stop tripping over ourselves and shift the ball wide, we just do it so rarely that it's hard for him to have much impact. His pass last night to staines was one of the classiest plays of the season.
We on here do not properly appreciate how difficult it is to play on the back foot without momentum all the time, to have every opposition kick be met by a wall of defenders with no space to move. Because our forwards get smashed he is always returning the ball into a well set defensive line, if he even has time to return it rather than getting smashed straight away. Compare that to just about every other quality fullback who often get up to 20 metres of room when they start to return. Then couple that with a whole season of this relentless grind of getting nothing but bashed and you can appreciate how difficult it is to look good in attack. And yet Bula does, and he also tackles well as a fullback and has been probably as consistent as any player on our team. And yet there's people talking about his effort. I just don't see that at all, and I don't think it's right that in such a rubbish team we should knock a player who has such consistency and promise.
As for the suggestion of him playing centre, I think he'd go well there, and if you had an elite fullback you'd happily move him. However, left isolated at centre on our team I'd guess he's going to go missing because the issue with our team is not the quality of our outside backs (though they are bad) it is our complete lack of go forward which means we get no momentum in our sets which means we only see our backs feature in defensive misreads and carting it up in brutal hit ups where they get belted.
Keeping Bula at fullback is better than wasting him at centre.