On the other hand, having to play a 18 year old in a physically demanding league isn’t necessarily good for his development. Getting him kicked by Luke Brattan isn’t going to help that much. Old spent a long time with the reserves.
I’d counter that Van Hattum has shown himself to be a committed team player, who keeps his focus at crunch points. He got the flick on for Zawada’s goal. He has had a number of clutch successes.
Maybe leaving him out is a bit of shock therapy by Chief. Perhaps the only spot Chief sees for him is advanced RB and he’d prefer Sheridan there anyway, as a backup to Payne.
It just seems ridiculous, given how threadbare our squad is, to suddenly decide the guy who was good enough for us when we were top of the league can’t even find a bench space in a team that’s 6th, with 3-4 other sides putting pressure on even that.
I mean I don’t necessarily consider him to be the solution to all our problems, but I want us to win some games.
I’d say two things to think about- one is that some players such as Rufer fully matured later. The other is that if a coach can’t find a role for a player that’s not always the player’s fault alone.
Anyway- as you are saying it’s a results business. OVH wasn’t producing enough in what Chief’s seen and we’re lower on the table than we’d like. Let’s hope the January window is used a couple of times at least and it’s not too late for our season.
As another aside, cohesion in a team is usually important and I think perhaps we underestimate the value of several, at least second year, imports, plus a bunch of players very familiar with each other from the reserves in last year’s successes.
I’d counter that Van Hattum has shown himself to be a committed team player, who keeps his focus at crunch points. He got the flick on for Zawada’s goal. He has had a number of clutch successes.
Maybe leaving him out is a bit of shock therapy by Chief. Perhaps the only spot Chief sees for him is advanced RB and he’d prefer Sheridan there anyway, as a backup to Payne.
It just seems ridiculous, given how threadbare our squad is, to suddenly decide the guy who was good enough for us when we were top of the league can’t even find a bench space in a team that’s 6th, with 3-4 other sides putting pressure on even that.
I mean I don’t necessarily consider him to be the solution to all our problems, but I want us to win some games.
I’d say two things to think about- one is that some players such as Rufer fully matured later. The other is that if a coach can’t find a role for a player that’s not always the player’s fault alone.
Anyway- as you are saying it’s a results business. OVH wasn’t producing enough in what Chief’s seen and we’re lower on the table than we’d like. Let’s hope the January window is used a couple of times at least and it’s not too late for our season.
As another aside, cohesion in a team is usually important and I think perhaps we underestimate the value of several, at least second year, imports, plus a bunch of players very familiar with each other from the reserves in last year’s successes.