In the NRL games I’ve seen him play, he hasn’t impressed.
It’s also very rare that a 24-year-old who’s barely played NRL becomes a quality first-grade player.
Like I said, I think he’s at the Wakeham level of quality.
Players such as Cody Walker and Jerome Hughes didn’t start playing NRL until age 24 or later, so I don’t think being around 24, even 25 or 26 and haven’t yet played any/or much NRL is a major concern, BUT the ones such as Cody and Jerome always showed individual brilliance and were regularly starring at Qld Cup level.
I’ve seen a bit of Joseph O’Neill play over the past few years, he looked like being a superstar a few seasons back, but has since stalled a little. He seems a more structured halfback, than he is individually brilliant. The good halves now really need some type of individual brilliance to threaten to make line breaks themselves, otherwise you end up with players such as Kyle Flanagan, Hastings and I think Joseph O’Neill, Dean Hawkins and Kurt Falls are others who fall into that same criteria.
Then you have others who are quick off the mark and strong, but not a lot of creativity aside from those strengths such as Dylan Brown. I believe Ethan Sanders and Ronald Volkman fit into that bracket. Very handy players if you have a dominant creative halve in the team alongside of them.
In Wests Tigers case we obviously need halves who are the full package with plenty of X-Factor to come with it.
Two players not currently being selected in their clubs NRL sides are Jayden Sulllivan and Braydon Trindall who are by far the best attacking halves anywhere outside of the NRL. No NRL team would have trouble scoring points and making line breaks with these 2 as their halves. I realise both are contracted to their current clubs for the next couple of seasons, but both have seemingly re-signed hastily and I doubt either of them would be on any more than 200k tops, where they could both now potentially earn double that, possibly more on the open market with the lack of quality halves.