Quote the flying biscuit="the flying biscuit"Is George Williams the most overrated player in the world....?
I dont get him at all.... has pace and looks to take the line on occasionally but in the games I've seen him play he has never been close to being the best player on the pitch.
When Sean O'loughlin is your most creative player with the ball something cant be right.'"
I don't think I've seen many young British halfbacks play consistently well year after year. It just seems to happen that they experience inconsistency and many fail to live up to the hype. With Williams though he's currently top of the league in try assists while having a poor year. That's not a bad situation. It's like a team playing badly but still managing to win. He's our most important player. Okay, he's not playing well but take him out of the side and he's the one we can't replace to anywhere near the same standard.
Last year he was the best player on the pitch in plenty of games, this year only a few but the entire team is suffering in that regard. What doesn't help is that he's our biggest threat with the ball in a one dimensional attack. We're all too predictable and often struggle to create space and that's what halves need to play at their best.
The deal with Williams is that he's got an outstanding running game, is physically strong, very good defensively, reads the game well and also in the last year or so has developed an eye for delivering an excellent final pass. A lot of his try assists now come from passing which is good to see. He also has an excellent short kicking game.
Yes he's got negatives too like most young players. He's by no means the finished article and if he doesn't fix a few things he'll never be one of the best, which he does have the potential to be. He's already played very well for England which is the highest level you can play at.
What concerns me is that he's still early in his career and has obvious flaws to his game but because of the lack of quality halves in Super League has been elevated to 'marquee' status before he's actually developed into one. He's our marquee player because he could be one of the best. He's currently one of Super League's better players when in form but there's a difference. He's also playing alongside a halfback that doesn't seem to compliment him well. Matty Smith was a steady Eddie who had little creativity but could keep to a structure. He was let go because over his last 2 years he wasn't even steady and was making plenty of errors in games. However, when both were playing well Smith and Williams at least balanced each other out. Leuluai doesn't. We needed another steady player with a good long kicking game who can do the sort of thing Sneyd did yesterday. Instead we've brought in someone who wasn't really a good enough halfback the last time he was here. When Leuluai played well he was generally playing as a direct threat because his ballplaying and kicking weren't good.
While halfbacks generally don't 'partner' each other in the strict sense anymore, what one does affects the other, and if you have one with particular strengths and weaknesses you want your other half to be able to offer what they don't. If we have no real threat down the right, the defence can easily focus on keeping their shape and discipline when we go left.
There's a lot of pressure on Williams to create everything and teams know that. They also know our bog standard attacking structure and how to defend against it and as a result our playmakers struggle to have as much influence as they could.
