by mrbrownstone Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:11 pm
Really going back and forth on Welch. On the plus side, he's 26, touching on 100 first grade games, coming off another origin series, should be somewhere near his physical prime & prime as a first-grader, no Finucane, Grant, Tino. Seems the most likely candidate to pick up bigger minutes over JBrom/NAS.
On the other hand, his long-term average in 50-70 minutes (to exclude an outlier 79 in 73 minutes at lock in 2018) is 47.6, priced at 40 not quite enough.
In 50-70 mins last year, that jumps to 51. But even then he had three straight 39s, two of which came in blow-outs against the Titans & Bulldogs (42-6, 41-10), where had his two lowest tackle counts at starting prop for the year. A low tackle-count blowout is not exactly unlikely with Broncs and Canterbury in their first 5 games before Finucane returns.
Then, in a few of the games where he did score well in bigger mins, the bench looked like this:
vs Eels: Eisenhuth (39 min), Vete (18 min), Hynes (34 min), Schonig (5 min)
vs Rabbits: Schonig (36 min), Lewis (18 min), Vete (15 min), Hynes (0 min)
vs Dragons: Storm C team, he was the only regular first grade starting forward.
Then again, he also scored well in bigger mins against the Roosters, Eels (FW1), and Panthers (GF) with essentially full-strength rotations, which is a spanner in that theory.
Can anyone sway me one way or the other?