Steve May wrote:
One of the problems the club has had over the years has been showing too much respect to players who are towards the end of their careers. We kept Brough on for two years too many for example.
Jerry has been a genuinely great player for us, but he's nearly 32 years old and still has three years left on his contract.
Its important to create a nurturing and supportive culture for the players, but it cannot come at the cost of putting off hard decisions. Avoiding reality does nobody any favours - including the players involved.
I’m not sure it’s as much a problem as a conundrum I think the club and Ken care and we have quite a lot of home grown guys in the set up which is different say from soccer where most teams now are full of continental players or from all around the UK due to the far reach of soccer scouting systems.
Jerry for many years had a partnership with Leroy Cudjoe who could magic up tries for him out of nothing with rare sleight of hand and an almost telepathic connection between the two. Jerry has never been the fastest nor the slowest, but has a good step, lots of natural power and runs a good angle with a great ability to finish.
Far be it for me to criticise a team that’s 4/5 but Jordan Turner is a left centre playing at right centre to accommodate Jake W playing left centre.
The real interesting thing about this is the clubs loyalty to Leroy, something that is right up to a point.
Whilst we think we have a chance of a Leroy playing again, providing he gets up to speed which is far easier said than done, we would look daft signing another ‘star’ centre if Leroy can play well enough again and win a new contract.
Put the ‘old’ Leroy back in or a true class right centre and Jerry might start to get the ball in a position to break tackles again with a little bit of space which a good centre will create for him.
I rate JT but a year ago the back line was meant to be Jerry, Leroy, JT and Uate, two of whom have not played very much JT was down to play left centre.
So maybe the conundrum is really Leroy and Uate, not Jerry as a Soccer club would likely have ‘retired’ both of them on medical grounds, I’m not anti Leroy far from it but both him and the club need to decide what is the likely outcome as surely we can’t be considering a contract extension at this stage....
But equally if we want to use Jerry in a better way we need a natural left to right passing centre.... JT is a right to left passer by nature....
