I believe a successful spine needs to be balanced. It requires a combination of a game manager, ball players, runners and support players.
Our likely spine of isaako, staggs, reynolds and turpin is not balanced. Although we now have a game manager, isaako and staggs are not known to be ball players (even ball hogs to an extent) so i dont see them creating many opportunities for their outside men. As such our game would again largely rely on individual efforts and tackle breaks again (which the better teams do not allow).
I dont see cobbo being an immediate improvement on isaako either as he too appears to be a runner only.
I really hope mam comes along quick because he could be that ball player we need in the spine. He looks like he could play similar to how cody walker plays with adam reynolds at souths now.
I would not be opposed to the herbie at fullback idea. He appears to display that desire to be highly involved in everything and has a high work rate (more metres than any other centre) which many of the elite fullbacks possess i.e. rts, paps, turbo. Yes he would need to work on things (passing game, positional play)but he could be one of those fullbacks that just continues to sniff around the ball and provides support (which our current option does not do).