July 2, 2017 6:00am
PARRAMATTA coach Brad Arthur says he won’t rush into signing another hooker, revealing he will put his full faith in Cameron King for the remainder of 2017.
The Eels have been linked to a number of rival players, including Canterbury’s Michael Lichaa, as cover following Kaysa Pritchard’s season-ending knee injury.
Pritchard is contracted until the end of 2018, but Arthur told The Sunday Telegraph he planned to purchase another hooker as back-up for next season.
However, he said he would be patient and wait for the right player to come up on the open market.
In the meantime, Arthur will give King every opportunity to impress at hooker for the rest of the season.
The 25-year-old impressed in Parramatta’s golden point victory on Thursday night — making 31 tackles in an impressive 62-minute stint.
It was a fair effort from King, especially when you consider it was his first NRL match since 2015 due to a number of serious injuries.
“At the moment we will give Kingy the opportunity,” Arthur said.
“But we are not in a rush to make any decisions (on another hooker).
“We have Kaysa who is signed until the end of 2018 and we will add a third option when we are ready.”
Replies
The rotation that was working with Kaysa having 20-25 then off until the last 20 worked with Smith coming on for the last 10/15 of first half and 10 into second, that gave Kaysa a 30 minute break in the middle, would like to see the same again with King to see how he goes.
Although I would suspect BA would likely to be looking at increasing Kings time to test his stamina.
I'd like to see him a bit more of him over the next few weeks and see how he goes with injuries. On that score the more minutes he plays he increases his workload, I would also note according to the article that he made 31 tacklers while that seems ok very much down on Kaysa's defence though.
Fcuk Popps, you could of least warned me. The wife had to pass me the wipes for my screen