With Haas , Fai , Offa , moose and possibly Lodge do we even need sims ?
I've been on the Sims rollercoaster. Excited when he was signed, exceeded expectations to start the year, but had cooled on him over the past couple of months. I'm now back to appreciating what he brings, as I assume Bennett does, and see how he uses him.
I think he was forced to do too much work at the Knights. His stats were a fair bit higher than they are with us, but he'd drop a lot of ball and give away stupid penalties and just appear to be lazy and not putting in (hence why Knights fans were happy to see him go). I think with him though he's certainly not like a McGuire, who gets better the more minutes he plays, Sims' effectiveness doesn't so much taper off as much as it drops off a cliff. Bennett knows this, and is using him wisely. He knows that he'll get worn down, but instead of worrying about him getting found out, he basically dares the opposition to tire him out, because he hits like a fucking hammer. "Run at him if you want, you'll tire him out, but you'll still be feeling it next week and when he comes off, one of the younger, more dynamic players will come on to run over you". He'll only make 5 runs and 10 tackles in his first stint, but that's enough to do his job, and there's not much he can do to improve those tackle numbers - if you watch, the opposition players often refuse to run at him.
He's excellent in terms of dominating tackles and rarely gets dominated himself. He's actually a pretty good offloader too. But he's far better starting, absorbing the initial venom, than coming on after 20 and being surrounded by fatigued players and getting tested laterally. He also normally gets a big rest, so is almost completely refreshed for his second stint.
