I agree with most of what you say MT, but we have a massive issue in our back row.
I don’t need to look at stats to know we have made the least amount of line breaks out of any NRL team in the back row, add to that we have yet to find a 13 that does anything to assist our halves with some simple ball playing.
Papali’i has been slowly building and was by far our best player last night. I agree Blore hasn’t done much until last night, but he’s a big body with decent speed and toughness, he’s still very young for an NRL forward and surely he has much more upside than an ageing slowing Bateman.
You keep saying Seyfarth is not up to it and I agree I don’t think he’s done enough to be a starting player, but he comes off the bench makes plenty of tackles and very rarely misses one. Tell me what Bateman does any better than him ? Not forgetting you cannot have any NRL side such as Wests Tigers with no local juniors that bring a bit of heart & soul into the team, Seyfarth is one of the only few local juniors in our current top 17 and would be on a minimum wage which allows us to potentially spend more to try and sign players in the positions we desperately need.
Bateman on 700k offers nothing other than a bit of fire when the opposition rubs him the wrong way. I’d much prefer he runs the ball and tackle with a bit of purpose other than running like he’s wearing gum boots and make 40 arm grabbing tackles which are often 3rd man in. He’s also good for a dumb turn over when we are in good field position every week.