Who are some of the best impact players we've seen in the NRL? The guys who could come off the bench and spark something for their side. I actually think Parramatta has been relatively well served in that aspect over the past 15-20 years. We had Dean Widders for a while who always seemed to be in the action when on the field, followed by Feleti Mateo whose offloads always had teams worried and then to a lesser extent we had Kenny Edwards who could definitely turn a match on its head, sometimes for the opposing team.
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Dean Widders.
Fuiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!
Yeah I reckon he went alright :)
P J Marsh was pretty effective of the bench
David Solomona i think was also great impact. And Piggy Riddell was another
Solomona, Brad Drew and widders for mine.
Didn't Piggy Riddell start for us with PJ Marsh coming off the bench?
Depends what sort of impact you after. There plenty of explosive fowards who can have impact off bench but I think a great utility on bench has more impact. Gidley was good for in lifting tempo of the game when in rep teams. I like the idea of 1 player on bench who can slot in various positions as required to lift the team
Gutho reminds me of gidley as he can cover plenty of positions and capable of playing up tempo footy without really being specialist in 1 position.
Ego gets in the way though if player classed as utility or impact bench player. A lot of forwards start career on bench and despite being suited playing off bench they want bigger role so work on fitness and endurance meaning they lose their explosive impact. They end up average starting players instead of a great utility or explosive bench player capable of turning a game.
Would take a very humble player to accept that role long term but I think we will see more players who are specialist bench players once interchange drops. There are number of young coaches who will change how game is played over next few years especially if interchange is dropped. Team line ups will move away from the current players where their little difference in size, speed and ability of Backrowers and centres, or fullback and halves.
If fatigue is introduced teams will want have players capable of exposing tired defences and each bench will have specialist impact player instead of common sight of 4 forwards or 3 fowards and hooker.
Not sure who started and who come off the bench but the Brad Drew/PJ Marsh rotation was deadly. Think they swapped about a bit when it came to who started. That rotation tore shreds through the opposition in 2001 and the amount of tries and points scored that year by a team will probably never be beaten. It was largely due to that rotation. Still can’t believe we didn’t win that year. My biggest disappointment as a fan in over 40 years of being a supporter. I’ve never rewatched that grand final and never will.
Kingston went alite
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