Where do we play him though ?
You can't drop Dearden now, not after playing so many minutes for us this season, and if MILF can regain his form under Kevvie then it would be hard to argue that they would be our starting halves combination.
I'm of the opinion that Croft was doing his role reasonably well and easily outplaying Milf up until Tigers or Dogs game.... and to me (from my arm chair) it looked like he was used to playing in a well oiled machine with players around him knowing what the **** they're actually meant to be doing. Something that was clearly not happening at the Broncos for the last couple years
Against the storm is where it completely hit the fan as Milf was moved to fullback and the timing was completely off. It's like no one had played together before and Croft went way into his shell coupled with intense scrutiny from the media.
I also think Seibold wanted Milf to be the attacking spark and own the ball inside the 20m, but he was so woefully out of form and seemingly disinterested that he was offering nothing on that left edge, which put the emphasis on Croft to try and spark something, whilst also getting the team around the field.
Overall I just think it was trash coaching and a complete inability to get the team to play even the most basic of football.
We also had very very little ball inside the opposition 20m for basically the whole season, which doesn't really help us in evaluating the halves outside of all of them lacking a sufficient long kicking game to win the field position battle.
In terms of where he plays now, it probably comes down to the off season, pre season and trials, as I don't know if anyone has really put their hand up to be the 6 or 7.
Dearden has the inside running, but has deficiencies in his kicking game (he was also getting no help from his halves partner to finish the year). I actually think Dearden could do with a bit more time in qcup to refine his game against men and take a bit of pressure off him to own and run the entire team. But he's also our most likely option in the halves and will play, so here's hoping he gets some sort of help from the rest of the spine.
Milf was out of form and then injured, but if Kevvie can get the spark back then he is top shelf and first picked. I actually thought in 2017 or 2018 he may have had the making of being a 7 because he looked good getting it from 1st receiver and attacking both sides of the ruck, but that may be a jump too far in one shortened preseason.
Croft would need the team around him humming at which point he can be a solid foil for either, but he also lacks in the kicking department... I'm not ready to write him off yet, but he probably needs a more consistent team around him (which could be literally any other team because we seem to be playing a different game to everyone else) and he can fit in knowing the team around him are doing their job as well