NO NEED TO MOVE MATEO

There has been alot of talk about moving Mateo to 5/8. I don't think we need to. How he plays at lock is very similar to how he plays at 5/8. He defends inside mortimer so no real difference there. He may have the odd hit up coming out of our end, but i have seen John Sutton as a 5/8 do this. I think with morts at halfback we will see mateo & keating share the 2nd receiver role. keating feeding our right side attack & mateo our left. So I don't think we need to shift Mateo to 6 just so he can be 5/8 his role at lock is and always has been very similar to that of a 5/8.

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  • I agree essentially but I think at lock he has been really wearing himself down with a lot of tough carries inside our half. It has limited his game time and made him a 50 to 60 min man. We have other players to do that bull work

    The foxtal comentators on Monday all said that Mateo needs more game time, I agree and the simple way to do that is to play him in the backs and let him inject himself when required.

    He should be left fresh for when we are in the opposition 20 because it is there that we really need someone like Mateo to test out the defensive line. At the moment we look really ineffective 20 out from the opposition line.
  • I agree with what you are saying as well, everyone seems to think because Feleti is big he should ba a forward. Feleti Mateo is a running ball player and wasted in the forwards, just because of his size doesn't mean he is cut out for running into other forwards for hard meters.

    I don't understand why people think he was no good at 5/8, i seem to remember him playing there and doing well in 08. Some of his chips over defence to on comming runners scored us a few try's and his ball handling skills weren't to bad, he threw quite a few good cut out passes and dummy's. Alot of Feleti's best offloads come from him running at smaller backs and slicing between them and popping the ball to a quick backing up back.

    Mateo can play at lock but prefers 5/8 and captains his country in that position, and i said in another blog that he has a hand in just about everything they do. Considering the size of Tonga they punch well above there wieght.

    Feleti is not cut out for the hard knocks of forward life, some will say its because he is lazy, i say its because he doesn't want to play there. Not everyone tall plays basketball, not everyone who is ahort is a jockey so just because he is big doesn't mean he should automaticaly be a forward.

    Not just the foxtel commentators are saying he needs more ball and more time, channel 9 say the same thing, news papers also. Personally i think he is the real deal but is being wasted in a role thats just not him
  • Mateo was being talked about as an origin 5/8 when he was playing there for parra so I don't get why people constantly say on this forum that he has no history of playing well there.

    When Mateo was at 5/8 he was our 'go to man' - not Hayne.
  • How quickly some people seem to forget that. There was even talks of him possibly making the bench for Australia.
  • Including our own coaching staff, there is now a real risk that he will be frozen out of the club.

    I reckon other clubs like Auckland will hardly believe there luck if we effectively retain Kris Keating and Daniel Mortimer over Feleti Mateo.
  • I would move him in a heartbeat.... he is the only ballplayer in the team. The only other player that has any hint of a passing game before the line is Hayne and his passing game is just not polsihed enough.

    Mateo needs to get more early ball and develop his combinations with Hayne and Tahu in particular.
  • I agree with you Bargearse. Playing lock Feleti can actually get wider and do more damage then he can at five-eighth. The try he set up last week was EXACTLY what you want from him. It also dramatically decreases his chance of injury. If he is playing five-eighth and standing in tackles, he is going to be in constant jeopardy of being hit from a couple of directions. Playing out wider he won't be gang-tackled as much.

    Plus don't underestimate the value of those forward carries where he invariably makes 11 to 12 metres. It's really important we have that kind of carry because our other backrowers don't do that. The opposition know they can't rush up on Feleti because he'll get the offload away. They also tend to try and put him on the ground rather than holding him up like you do with some other players, so it increases his chances of a fast play the ball and that's how you get momentum folks.

    It's the same argument as I have with moving Hayne. Like I say with him, at fullback you get your broken field play and you're ballplaying. With Feleti you get your metres and you're ball playing.

    And as a final point, I'll say Feleti defends much better at lock than five-eighth. He defends one man further in, and he's less susceptible to the flashy footwork where he just tends to throw out an arm and invariably misses the tackle.
  • I think the problem with Mateo is not Mateo.... short of Hayne doing has magic our 6,7 and 9 just don't have enough points in them against better teams.

    The wider you put Mateo the less quality ball he will get with the halves we have... plus it's amazing how little players are pushing up with him....

    At least at 6 he has the option of playing before the line more often (hence maybe less chance of injury).
  • He likes playing 5/8 more than lock actually but I think we know that he plays better at 13 .. DA Could maybe give him a crack at 5/8 for a coupla' games and we can see what happens.
  • An idea guys something different
    1.hayne 2. tahu, 3 reddy ,4,mateo ,5,grothe , 6 morts , 7 kk ....burt as dummy half, has the speed to make fantastic metres and ball skills to match
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