Hooker cashie or disguised dud?
Mitchell Kenny looks set to take on the starting hooker gig at Penrith with koro departing for the tigers at the end of the 2022 season and on the surface appears to be a decent cash cow priced at a 29pt avg (426k) and is expected to get the bigger split of mins against his competition Soni Luke. But given Ivan’s tendency to play his players for “feel” and in some games minutes for both players could be all over the place.
Kenny’s work rate at hooker is not great, in 11 appearances ranging from 40-65 mins per game Kenny averages 32.6 pts for a ppm of around 0.6-0.7 which is not what you want from a guy not playing 80 minutes a week, plus some of these games involved stints in which he played a hybrid role of middle and hooker which muddies the waters even more but given both positions are similar in nature it probably didn’t affect his scores too much.
Kenny is also more in the Andrew McCullough mould of scorer which is to tackle tackle tackle and do nothing else and when your playing for a winning team that doesn’t have to do much defending its not going to bode well for a scorer like Kenny, if there’s still any doubt in your mind about this one here’s a little more for you, so far over Kenny’s entire NRL career of 56 games he has a scored a whopping ONE try (avg 49mins) in one of the NRL’s most potent attacking teams in recent memory, with an average of 32 tackles a game plus an average of 6 demerits per game the floor for Kenny may be high but the ceiling is right next to it.
If anything is clear its that Ivan Cleary doesn’t like to play a hooker for 70+ mins proven by the fact he was willing to bench Api Korosaui regardless of form and more on whether he thought it was right for the matchup or not. (koro only played over 70mins 9 times in 2022 and 2 of those were closer to 80 then 70).
None of this bodes well for mitch Kenny.
- His role isn’t safe.
- Historic ppm isn’t good even in short stints.
- No attacking prowess.
- Base stat tackler in a team that doesn’t do much defending.
Mitchell Kenny is an Out an Out TRAP if your one of the 13% with him in your team toss him onto the scrap heap now. 30-35avg AVOID
INTERN AUSTIN
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