I think if you look at the fact we are using TMM as a ball playing forward it only strengthens the argument that Gannon is signed to play NRL without fuss.
The club lose two ball players in Walker and Harris. they push this guy into the role even though they have no intention of retaining him....in other words filling this role is more important to Webster with someone with half like skills than using forwards that do not have those skills in our current set up.
Then factor in that they have signed a ball player from as far off as the Superleague.
If the plan was not to use Gannon off the bat then it is stupid not to extend TMM at least a season to stop gap this slot of ball player that they so obviously value.
Webster has a fondness for the utility forward. Even when Bailey Sironen was being let go, he kept being a Webster staple.
Gannon will be an ESL one hundred gamer when he lands. He will go into preseason and offer them a passing game that not even the Warriors back line possess at present, things will run smoothly off that and they will find it very hard to ignore that addition to their otherwise stilted passing set plays.
Gannon has a big motor and is being played as an eighty minute starting forward where he is right now (to be fair I did not know he had an engine, the pommy commentators were banging on about it in his last appearance, that he is an endurance type player. and he is playing eighties this season quite comfortably).
My prediction is that Gannon will come into preseason training, transform the matrix of our sets, which will make the coaches go....ok lets give him both preseason trials and run him long to see if he hacks that....if he does lets sit down and talk about round one at fourteen.
I get that we are stacked for forwards and I get that Gannon has never played NRL.
I guess what I am arguing here is specialization. I think Warriors fans keep forgetting that coaches go for roles in teams over arbitrary fan expectations about proving yourself in the NRL.
Basketball coaches will use non NBA proved players to fill roles like Center, point guard, or power forward, the NRL has gone in the same direction, specialists come first, the ball playing lock forward or back row forward is a specialist role NRL coaches look for ahead of worrying about Fan imagined player hierarchies about whether that player has ever played an NRL game.
To go a hemisphere away to fill that type of roll you are admitting you do not have that specialist ready in your NSW cup, so why bring that outsider into that level where you already have no one up to the task?
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