True. I guess these guys all have massive upside though so you give them a bit of rope but you can only do so for so long. On the positive, both Piaks and Mariner looked noticeably fitter and played noticeably smarter in the trial so that's a good sign. We haven't seen Cobbo yet but Mam, to me at least, looked a bit out of shape in the box on the weekend, that's a concern.
So you kind of look at it like:
Leadership Core: Reynolds, B.Hunt, Haas, Carrigan, Walsh
Leadership Support: Staggs, Hetherington, Taupau, Riki, Hoeter
Squad Guys: Arthars, Walters, Smoothy, Mozer, Paix, Madden, Willison, Te Kura, Jensen, J.Hunt, Gosiewski
Need a Kick at Times: Mam, Cobbo, Mariner, Piakura, Haas' white shoes, Baker (to the curb)
Other/Unknown: Everyone else
Penrith are all home grown talent or at least mostly so, so they have the loyalty card they can play with is absolutely benefitted by being so successful and good on them, they worked hard to get to be so good, it is well deserved. They also have amazing systems in place from the ground up. I could actually see Redcliffe become something similar in about 10 years if they follow a similar blueprint, albeit having as much success as Penrith have had is going to be hard to follow.
Melbourne...