Strangely enough Phil Gould had Hiku as one of the top wingers in the comp and while i greatly respect his opinion, I'd have to watch a lot of replays to see why he believes as such... or maybe he's just looking to recruit him to Penrith. He's safe, his defence on the wing is questionable and while I think he's slow (or looks slow) he does score a lot of tries.
Everyone on here knows what the problem has been this year. It started with all the crap about DCE and Foz, which definitely caused a distraction for those two players, but it actually goes back deeper than that and it was the sacking of Glenn Stewart last year and the bitterness it caused among some of the senior playing group. Toove's lost the group, or many of them at least, and they demonstrably lost the passion they'd had which seemed to implode early in the season.
Add to that that we literally lost 3 recent State of Origin forwards (King, Watmough and Stewart) and if you take some Stout out of the six pack, you eventually end up with Pale Ale. It may be nice to look at and easy to swallow, but it's not going to make the opposition 'Chuck with fear'.
We had huge injuries to our forwards this year and we were starting below par anyway. We lost a lot of speed up front when both Buhrer and Lawrence came down with injuries which meant we very rarely pushed and broke the defensive line through the forwards and that's where Manly has always succeeded in providing space and momentum for the backline.
So to 2016. I think we have a bit of grunt back. Opposition players will try and avoid running at Jake T and Myles as they both hit hard and apparently hurt, but the back row worries me as I wonder where the mongrel is coming from. Buhrer is probably more of the Menzies mould, fast, classic tackler but not quite there yet and then I look at the rest and think....'void'.
I think we have to wait another year when Demetriou, Knight and a couple of others develop. Next year I see as just development and can't see us finishing in the Top 8 but if we do it will be 7th or 8th.