J
Johnny92
NRL Player
- Jul 3, 2021
- 2,163
- 6,305
I don't think we've seen what type of player Kobe actually is, I do think theres more to his game then being a small prop that does one out runs.Having a look through Madge's team selections over the years it seems he likes big forward packs.
Souths notoriously ran over the top of teams in 2014 via the Burgess brothers and Tigers operated with a third prop at lock... however both those periods were before Vlando ball or when the change happened.
For the kiwis last year he had JFH and Leota starting props with Tapine at lock and a bench of Neame, NAS and Leo Thompson... so again going with a big forward pack, but that may have been due to limitations on available selections.
This finally changed for the blues this year where his lock was McInness initially, before changing to Cam Murray for games 2 & 3 when he became available and using Connor Watson off the bench.
It would be a big call to move Patty out of lock and go with Kobe, but Kobe is not the same type of lock as Patty, Cam Murray and even Connor Watson... which leaves Kobe effectively in the prop rotation. I think there is still value in Kobe especially if Madge's strategy remains that rolling through the middle and quick ptb's.
Under Kev I think he was given the role that he played.
It's going to be interesting to see if some of these guys are going to be different next season under Madge with the type of players they are. We really don't know what Kev was instructing these guys to do. Look at Payne in origin this year for example.. he was a different player