I'm going to say it straight out first, I think that the Eels' Daniel Mortimer is overrated. As I knew that this would be a fairly unpopular opinion and truthfully, a little bit rough on the kid as he's just started his career, I went to the stats book to back up my harsh call.

I tried to find something in the stats that I wasn't seeing with my own eyes, some proof that justified the ding dong battle between the Eels and Dogs to sign the youngster at the start of this year. I understand he comes from league royalty, but look at Prince Charles, just because you come from royalty doesn't mean you're going to turn out to be super talented. To look at, he's short and skinny in stature (still only with development to come), he has a good running game but doesn't posses the strength to burst through the line as noted with o line breaks to date this year compared to Lockyer and Marshall who are on 3 each. He has an okay passing game but doesn't particularly trouble the defensive line with it, so far this year he has o line break or try assists, Marshall has 12 and Sutton from Souths has 10. Defensively he is strong, however he has the highest average of missed tackles from any no.6 in the NRL with 5 per game missed. He is however a real go-er.

Now, I'm not actually aiming and taking pot shots at him as he is only 19 at this stage, but I think we need to just quell the hype for a while and let him develop physically and with the game. He's a super competitor that might need a bit of guidance at the Eels for a while because as we can see with the stats, he may have a long hard road ahead of him.