Players we need improvement from to start moving up the table:
Dream, improve attack
Centre, Toa needs to play like he is against the cowboys.
Steph, needs to be the leader and run over other teams.
Pole, run like he did against the Raiders and have impact off the bench.
Seyfarth and Twal need more!
Staines, have a break out year and finish of our plays and
Backrow, 2 x internationals, Papallai needs good ball and Bateman looks underdone again. But we need controlled aggression from him
I semi agree that a lot of these "improvements" are things we do have to focus on, and I think you are 100% right when it comes to your statements on Steph, Pole, Seyfarth & Twal. However, I think you have simplified it to the point of shifting the blame away from the team as a whole.
Bula: Attack will immediately improve now that we have a 6 who won't move like he is in cement and controlling 7. Sezer will be a dominant half who will organise and kick and keep everyone else accountable, and whoever is 6 will at the very least offer a fair bit of attacking threat. Api is also sneaky and knows how to break down a team, so having halves that he wont have to baby as much will allow him to use his deception more effectively. Even Olam frees up Jahream as he is the kind of player that leaves the opposition defence anxious(I don't care how anyone feels about Olam, he puts 10x more fear into a team than Tommy Talau or AJ Kepaoa). All of this will mean Jahream will have more time and space in attack than he did last year.
Centre: Toa, I agree he definitely needs to improve but I wouldn't say Wakeham used Toa as well as he should have. I also believe he played pretty banged up towards the end of the year as we pretty much had no one left depth wise. Whenever he got good ball he was on fire, but I think the problem last year is we were pretty much forcing the pass on every play. The games we played simple and he got early ball he looked best on field. Olam as the other centre over AJ or Tommy should again, speak for itself.
Staines: If he is outside of Olam then I think it could be a really good combo, he was our best support player by a mile when he was fit at the start of last year. I really think Olam could help Charlie have the breakout year that he needs. If he is outside Toa and Bateman I'm a bit worried as they tend to cut back infield to look for support which renders Charlie pretty useless. Put Lobb or Tupou on that side to try and add a different dimension to the team with their ability in air.
Backrow: I honestly can't say them not getting good ball is their fault, I will wait for this year to judge. Brooks has never been consistent when it comes to using his second rowers and again Wakeham wasn't someone throwing pearlers every play. The ball was consistently going behind our players and hitting the floor, no one ever looked organised and at the end of the day that is a halves problem. The coach may have dumb philosophies or approaches to the game, but you should at least know how to execute those dumb approaches. Hopefully Sezer can help address this, I think his main role this year will be to keep everyone accountable and doing their jobs.
