Banahan....be honest....

First topic message reminder :

Deep down in places you don't talk about at dinner parties you wanted Banahan in the England side, you needed Banahan in the England side and then all of a sudden you all fell out of love with him.

Now own up and share your Banahan epiphany moment i.e when you realised he was a waste of space playing for England.

I always thought he brought something to the party with his size relative pace and ability to throw out the back door passes. I quite liked the idea of him coming off the bench against tired legs…but then…..

I'll get the ball rolling….mine was shamefullly fairly recently. It was when he had a one on one with soon to be retiring Shane Williams 5-10m from the tryline and (no disrespect to SW) Williams decked him and I saw the light.

Are there any other players that have given you a similar experience? If so share them with the group. It is good for you.

England need size and power in the back line if we are to trouble the top 3 sides in the world. Banahan had promise and we can't bl;ame England for trying him out. He didn't really make it but the notion of having size and power still holds. I don't think you'll ever see SL picking weedy centres like Tait and Flutey again. If he does I'm off to support Wales. (I didn't really mean that but you know what I mean).

I'll be honest. I think the criticism he comes in for is out of proportion. It's not as if he made an ass of himself and predicted he'd be a great asset to England. The same fans who bigged him up are now knocking him down.

I'd be surprised if Banahan's size and power didn't have its uses. This is the guy who ran over and knocked out a respectable int'l flanker, to say he's gash is harsh to say the least. By no means am I saying he's great either, just that an unduly amount of blame seems to come on him. As someone has quite rightly said, it was Hook who really prevented the try by ripping the ball away, otherwise Banahan may well have stretched over and we'd be talking about how Shane couldn't quite stop him at the time.

Well said, Knowsit.

There are plenty of players who don't quite make it at international level but are still very good club players. It appears that with some folk you have to either be either world class or awful.

His size is always going to make him stand out one way or the other, but that's hardly his fault!

sugarNspikes wrote:
There are plenty of players who don't quite make it at international level but are still very good club players. It appears that with some folk you have to either be either world class or awful.

I call that the Andy Murray syndrome - being a bit below the very best does not make you a completely untalented muppet, as many on here and in the media like to portray those of our sportsmen who are very good but not quite good enough to take the biggest prizes (Luke Donald and Lee Westwood are similar).

Sometimes a player is outstanding at one level, but struggles to make the step up to a higher level - perhaps Banahan is one of those, in that his weaknesses (agility and positioning) are more exposed by top class international opponents, while his assets (size and power) are less beneficial against the higher class opponent (who these days are often bigger and more powerful themselves). The Cricket section has been discussing Graeme Hick recently, who would be the archetype for this - a genuinely great County cricketer but struggled to make the transition to Test cricket and ended up having a stop-start England career that rarely lived up to his potential.

Of course, confidence and self-belief is another issue, and I'm not convinced that Banahan has the certainty in his abilities at the highest level that would allow him to overcome a few poor performances - top players have a certain level of arrogance that says 'I'm better than you', something that our 2003 players had plenty of (MJ, Back, Dayglo, Dawson all had it by the truck load, and the likes of Hill, Wilkinson and Greenwood weren't lacking confidence in a slightly quieter way), but that has been missing from many of our players in the last few years (in addition to Banahan, my impression is that Tait, Borthwick and Sheridan were a bit short in this respect). This sort of self belief can be developed as a consequence of good performances, but I think there has to be a bit there to start with, and I don't think Banahan has enough of it.

Tim Henman syndrome would be a better name dummy half. Andy Murray is still young enough to win a major. But it´s a nice analogy.

I guess it depends on the team and its standards as well. Some teams are the better sum of its parts whilst others are more noticeable in certain positions when they´re not brilliant players. It´s all relative I guess. It seemed not too long ago that England not to mention a few other teams were crying out for a decent centre partnership. I remember hearing Bananaman's name mentioned as a possible OC to come in off the wing.

Did I just see Banahan trip over his own feet with an open field in front of him....

Showing some decent touches at 13 but that boy is not a winger