Workhorse Watch Week 22
It’s finals time! For those of you still in the hunt, congratulations. To those whose seasons are now over, commiserations.
Hopefully you went down swinging like Hamish Neal’s Mavericks who with Monday Night Football to play trailed Alex Malyon’s Jets 33-34. On the line was the last finals berth with both teams on 11 wins for the season. An early try to Anthony Minichiello pushed the Mavs out to a 37-34 advantage. Unfortunately for the Mavs, the Jets’ Beau Falloon was steadily racking up involvements and with 8 minutes to go Falloon got his 40th and the writing was on the wall for the Mavs. It was just Falloon’s second workhorse for the season with first coming the week before. (Footnote: A late try assist was awarded to the Jets’ Edrick Lee when the scores were revised on Tuesday which meant the final score was 40-37 in favour of Jets. That only made things worse for the Mavs considering Lee was a player they had retained from last season and then cut earlier this year after he suffered what was classified at the time as a “season ending injury”. The Jets had only recently picked him up.)
Each week I’ve written the Workhorse Watch knowing at the end of the year we will crown the Workhorse of the Year. For the whole season I’ve figured the criteria would simply be who scores the most. But why? You don’t win an Academy Award for giving the most number of performances, you get it for giving the best one and if we were to apply the same criteria to Workhorse of the Year it would be hard to go past Andrew Fifita. The Sharks prop was killing it against the Warriors, racking up an involvement every minute before going off in the 33rd minute with a broken arm. Fifita would later return and get a workhorse try with 28 tackles and 14 hit ups. It won’t get him Workhorse of the Year but if there was an award for Outstanding Performance by a Workhorse Whilst Injured it would have to go to Fifita.
Still on the Oscar theme and the Lifetime Achievement Award would go to Nigel Plum for what he goes through just to get out on the field each week. Michael Chammis’ article on the weekend highlighting the physical toll Plum’s body has taken over the years and the amount of strapping needed each week just to hold his body together is amazing. The most astonishing part of the whole story is how much Plum loves what he does. He truly feels it is a privilege to go through what he does each week. Meanwhile this same week, 78% of players polled think Todd Carney, a player who has abused that privilege over and over should be given another chance.
WORKHORSE OF THE WEEK:
James Segeyaro: The Panthers’ rake has scored back to back honours, as once again he was the only player to score a double workhorse. Segeyaro moves to 16 workhorse tries in his last 12 games.
WORKHORSE PACK OF THE WEEK (Round 22)
8. Jesse Bromwich: 40 tackles + 15 hitups = 55
9. James Segeyaro: 41 tackles + 11 hitups = 52
10. Josh McGuire: 38 tackles + 17 hitups = 55
11. Jarrad Kennedy: 40 tackles + 12 hitups = 52
12. Josh Jackson: 48 tackles + 18 hitups = 56
13. Sam Burgess: 31 tackles + 21 hitups = 51
14. Robbie Farah: 58 tackles + 3 hit ups = 61
15. Joel Thompson: 40 tackles + 10 hitups = 50
CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
Just two entrants in the No Cigar Club this week with two of last week’s three (Rein and De Gois) getting back into workhorse territory this week.
Josh Papalii: 28 tackles + 11 hitups = 39
Chris Heighington: 25 tackles + 14 hitups = 39
STATS PER MINUTE
It’s been a while since we’ve had a back (that wasn’t really a forward just playing in the backs) rack up a workhorse try but on Monday night Daniel Mortimer received no favours from his former teammates as he was forced to make 34 tackles (to go with 7 runs) against the tri-colours (0.51 SPM). Even though he’s listed as a hooker I still classify Mortimer as a back given that playing in the halves is clearly his preferred position and the fact that Monday night is the only time he’s put up workhorse numbers.
Last week saw a number of players come in for some notable workhorses but only Tupou Sopoaga registered a workhorse try. Sopoaga did it comfortably with 46 involvements in 69 minutes (0.67 SPM) meanwhile Matt McIlwrick came in for the injured Shaun Fensom but only had 32 involvements in 54 minutes (0.59 SPM).
Tim Grant, who has a stats per minute score of 0.90 for the season continued at that rate on Sunday afternoon but sadly only saw 27 minutes of game time. His teammate Isaah Yeo played 74 minutes and had 37 involvements (0.50 SPM). Meanwhile Heath L’Estrange had very little workhorse impact on Monday night, playing just 44 minutes and only having 19 involvements (0.43 SPM); only Paul Carter and Rory Kostjasyn had lower stats per minute and played less minutes than L’Estrange.
The unpredictability that is Mike Cooper continued on the weekend. Despite playing fewer minutes than in his last four games, the Englishman managed to rack up a workhorse try thanks to a high involvement rate (1.12 SPM). Cooper had been averaging 51 minutes a game in his last four outings but a stats per minute of 0.76 meant he had only scored one workhorse try in that period. On Sunday afternoon he managed 48 involvements in just 43 minutes on the field.
(NOT SO) JUST QUICKLY
- The big talking point over the weekend was the draft. Anything that helps clubs retain local juniors is a positive but I don’t think a draft would achieve that. Without completely overhauling the system it’s hard to see how a draft would really work.
- The problem is not the need for an even competition, we have that. It’s to ensure that the player transfer market is not an economy where some commodities (like corporate support & media exposure) are able to be monetised and others (like junior development) are not: Which is why I think there is a need for player transfer fees.
- Right now you have clubs such as the Raiders and the Tigers who are like farmers with too much cattle and no way of selling it to those who need it. Instead those clubs who need it are simply stealing what they want like wolves in the night.
- I don’t know what the number would be (you could scale it from under 16s right through to first graders) but a player transfer fee would give clubs with strong junior bases a return on their investment which they can re-invest in more development.
- Alternatively they could put it towards covering salaries of long serving players. To me one of the biggest weaknesses of the long service exemptions is although you may not have to include all of a player’s salary into the cap you still have to come up with the money to pay him. A transfer fee could help meet those costs particularly for those teams that don’t enjoy large corporate support.
Geoff Adams
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