You can be a good player and also be overrated. That's where Luai falls imo.
He wasn't a passenger at Penrith obviously but wasn't in their top 5 most important players of the dynasty either. To me, Cleary, Yeo, Martin, Fisher-Harris and Edwards have been their 5 most important players throughout the period. Penrith's dominance hasn't been characterised by Luai occasionally chiming in and setting up a try down the left side, it's been about the intensity they play at and consistently being 5% better at all the little things to grind other teams down. Line speed, quick play the balls, getting over the advantage line and then Cleary's kicking game. Luai doesn't really contribute to any of those things like the other guys do.
I think it's fair to say they're missing Luai now, but more so because his replacement isn't first grade standard rather than Luai being some invaluable player.
Luai is a good 5/8th. In a league where there's 34 starting halves, I'd say he's somewhere between 10th to 15th. There are a number of guys who are decisively better and then a bunch who you could argue either way, depending on team fit and role.
The reality is that with team success comes an inflated sense of value placed on an individual, and this is magnified when they're in the halves. So Luai was never going to be a guy who hit the market and would receive a contract that's reflective of his ability. It was always going to be a contract that reflected his accomplishments. That, tied in with the fact he's incredibly well known and has a large media/social-media profile means he's fallen into the "superstar" category and as a result, is overrated.
Even disregarding his performances this year, I wasn't a huge fan of the signing for a number of reasons.
It wasn't because I don't think Luai would improve our team and help revamp the culture, but because of the length of the deal and money associated with it. I would have much preferred giving him 2 years and 3 million instead of 5 years and 6 million. If he succeeds on the shorter deal, then we re-sign him and go from there. If he flops on the longer deal, we're stuck with him and realistically losing one of Galvin or Fainu, who both imo have the potential to be better players than Luai. Mega money deals like that should be reserved for the genuinely elite players. Instead, we offered a guy a huge deal who still had things to prove and his body of work hadn't suggested he was worth it.
