Kurt Gidley moving forward, and should move into the forwards

After a terrible personal performance against the Cowboys in round 8, Newcastle captain Kurt Gidley has announced that he’s heading over to England to finish out his career with Warrington.

But first, there is a long NRL season to play out, and the Knights need to figure out where Gidley fits into their team.

Gidley has his fair share of critics, but he is still a valuable player. He just needs to be used in the right way.

At the moment Rick Stone is starting Gidley at fullback and moving him to hooker a third of the way through the game to make way for Sione Mata’utia at fullback.

This is a frustrating, overcomplicated and downright ineffective tactic.

For a number of years Gidley has been part of Newcastle’s spine, and he has a great deal of respect from his teammates and the coaching staff.

But it’s becoming clear that he needs to move from a shot caller to a support player.

Gidley often over calls his halves for the ball, only to make a poor decision when he gets it in his hands.

The halves, Jarrod Mullen and Tyrone Roberts, seem to lose confidence and refuse to back themselves when Gidley is calling the shots.

No one can doubt Gidley’s commitment to the Knights, but in his effort to do everything himself he makes a lot of errors.

But despite all this Gidley does have a place in the Knights’ top 17 – as an impact lock/second row coming off the bench.

Gidley has the ability to break tackles, make tackles, throw offload and play the ball at the line – all attributes which would make him an excellent impact backrower.

He’s also one of the fittest blokes in the NRL, and holds the Knights’ record in the beep test. In fact, he has broken his own record a number of times.

Compare his offensive career stats to those of Luke Lewis, who has also been slapped with the same utility tag for much of his career. Like Gidley, he has been forced to play a number of positions, from fullback to forward.

Gidley: Games 236, metres per game 101, tackle busts 480, offloads 297

Lewis: Games 242, metres per game 82, tackle busts 385, offloads 173

Gidley also averages more tackles a game (18.3 v 17.4), less missed tackles (2.3 v 2.9) and has a better effective tackle percentage than Lewis (85.1 v 80.6).

Yet despite this, Lewis is still considered an Origin and Test player, but Gidley is not.

Why?

Because of the amount of errors Gidley makes – he’s made a whooping 349 errors compared to Lewis’ 246.

This season alone he already has four times as many errors as Lewis does.

He simply tries too hard to make things happen when they aren’t on and as a result makes a ridiculous amount of errors.

If Rick Stone is serious about turning the Knights into final contenders, he needs to bite the bullet and put Gidley on the bench to inject into the game when his team is lagging.

Kurt Gidley is a work horse. As one of the fittest players in the competition he should be used like that, tackling his little red and blue heart out so other players a fresh when the game is on a knife edge.

Think back to Game 3 of the 2010 State of Origin series.

Gidley started from the bench and came on to replace Michael Ennis after 30 minutes – and went on to play the rest of the game in various positions.

Just before half-time, Gidley set up an inside pass for Paul Gallen, who crash over for New South Wales’ first try of the game.

In the 47th minute, Kurt scored the next try for the Blues which narrowed the point deficit to just one.

He continued to make several linebreaks and defended strongly. He was later awarded the Brad Fittler Medal for NSW’s player of the series.

Gidley was used perfectly in the game and demonstrated all the skills that would make him the ultimate impact player – setting up tries, scoring tries, making breaks and defending like a man possessed.

If Stone moves Gidley to the it opens up room for Sione Mata’utia at fullback, or alternatively Dane Gagai could be given a shot at the custodian role (where he played his junior football) and Mata’utia could slot in a centre.