South Sydney’s disastrous start to 2024 – which ultimately cost coach Jason Demetriou his job this week – has turned the spotlight on some of their underperforming superstars.
Several positional switches have been touted, most notably shifting the enigmatic Latrell Mitchell to centre after emerging as one of the NRL’s most influential players at fullback since leaving the Roosters for the Rabbitohs in 2020.
Instinctive five-eighth Cody Walker has also been earmarked for a move to halfback – where he has started just one NRL game, back in 2017 – to accommodate marquee signing Jack Wighton in the No.6.
Gambling on a line-up tweak often has marvellous trajectory-altering results – Lockyer to five-eighth, Inglis to fullback – but many more are canned after only a few weeks. Revisit some of the most notable short-lived positional switches from the past 40 years.
Paul Taylor
A precursor to the torrent of zippy halves and utilities who were transformed into hookers during the mid-1990s, Taylor’s switch to dummy-half in 1989 caused quite a stir.
Taylor wore the No.1 in three grand finals for the Eels during their golden era, before playing predominantly in the second-row or at halfback for the declining force in 1988.
Coach John Monie pitched the lionhearted lightweight into hooker role early in 1989, but the move lasted only four games and Taylor was subsequently dumped by the Eels in an acrimonious end to his decade at Parramatta before turning up at Penrith in 1990.
Ironically, Taylor unseated former Test hooker Royce Simmons in the grand final-bound Panthers’ line-up mid-season but a shoulder injury ended his career after just two appearances in the No.9.
Andrew Ettingshausen
As Cronulla battled through yet another dismal campaign in 1993, coach Arthur Beetson tossed the No.6 jumper to his NSW Origin winger/centre and Australian Test fullback Andrew Ettingshausen.
The local legend held his own in the unfamiliar role – with the Sharks managing to win seven of 13 games with ‘ET’ at five-eighth – but the arrival of John Lang as coach and, more specifically, gifted half Paul Green in 1994 allowed Ettingshausen to return to centre as the club became a force again.
Wendell Sailor
Sailor was a sensation on the Broncos’ wing in 1994 – his first full season of first grade – as he earned a Kangaroo Tour spot, but the presence of international three-quarters Michael Hancock, Willie Carne, Steve Renouf and Chris Johns forced Wayne Bennett into a positional rethink during ’95.
A headgeared Sailor was remodelled as a hardworking second-rower for the last six rounds of the season and the third-placed Broncos’ backdoor exit from the finals.
Recognising the flamboyant Sailor’s game-breaking talents were being wasted in the pack, he exclusively played on the wing for Brisbane over the next six seasons prior to his rugby union switch – winning three grand finals and becoming recognised as the preeminent flankman of his era.
Gene Ngamu
Talented young Kiwi Test pivot Ngamu was earmarked as champion ex-Penrith No.7 Greg Alexander’s permanent halves partner for the fledgling Warriors, but Stacey Jones’ emergence during 1995 left coach John Monie with a conundrum.
The ageing Alexander had extensive fullback experience and had a brief stint in the No.1, before a reshuffle saw Ngamu pushed to the custodian role for the run home that saw the fledgling outfit miss the finals on four-and-against with three losses from their last four games.
Ngamu was predominantly used at fullback during the first half of 1996 but increasingly became a target for aerial barrages, prompting Monie to retrench outgoing skipper Alexander from the halves again.
Forty-five of Ngamu’s remaining 47 starts for the Warriors were in the halves, though he was regularly used at fullback for Huddersfield Sheffield during their 2000 Super League foray.
Phil Blake
Jason Hetherington and Mark Soden made successful long-term switches from the halves to hooker during the first half of the 1990s, while the Geoff Toovey-Andrew Johns tandem act was a sensation at representative level at the 1995 World Cup and during the 1996 Origin series.
But Monie’s call to send 32-year-old tryscoring freak Phil Blake packing down into the Warriors’ front-row in 1996 had stalwarts from bygone eras grimacing.
The ultra-versatile Blake (who was essentially displaced as fullback by Jones’ rise in ’95) lasted a four-game stretch at hooker – and even managed a couple of tries – before Syd Eru was restored to the No.9 jersey.
Blake also played his first top-grade game on the wing in almost 10 years and the only game at lock in his career under Monie in 1996.
Mark Gasnier
Gasnier had played five-eighth for New South Wales in an unsuccessful gamble as the Blues relinquished the Origin crown in the 2006 decider – but that didn’t stop St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown from anointing his blue-chip centre as Trent Barrett’s No.6 successor.
The decision was taken out of Brown’s hands for most of 2007 as Gasnier succumbed to injury in the pre-season, but he handed the 13-Test centre the five-eighth role for his July return.
The experiment was aborted after four games – Gasnier returned to the centres for the Dragons before the end of the season, and for NSW in 2008.
Karmichael Hunt
Following their first back-to-back Origin series wins in almost two decades, the Queensland selectors got a bit cute when Darren Lockyer was ruled out of the 2008 opener.
The obvious choice for a five-eighth replacement was in-form Gold Coast halfback Scott Prince, who was considered unlucky to miss out on Australia’s Centenary Test squad a few weeks earlier.
But selectors sprung a surprise by picking incumbent fullback Karmichael Hunt.
The gamble allowed the burgeoning Billy Slater to slip into the No.1 jersey but Hunt’s – albeit courageous – non-traditional pivot display was put under the microscope after an 18-10 loss.
Prince was called up for the remaining two games with Hunt chosen on the bench before starting both matches at fullback, with Queensland carving out a memorable series victory.
Jarryd Hayne
Incoming Parramatta coach Daniel Anderson installed star outside-back Hayne at five-eighth for the opening rounds of 2009 and he struggled to adjust to his new role in a disastrous start to the season for the Eels.
Hayne was relieved of the pivot duties after just four games. It is now part of the game’s folklore that he moved to fullback and embarked on one of the most spectacular runs of individual form seen in premiership history, carrying the Eels to the grand final and winning the Dally M Medal.
Anderson’s Parramatta successors, Stephen Kearney and Ricky Stuart, and Gold Coast’s Neil Henry tried Hayne in the No.6 in later campaigns – with mixed results.
Corey Oates
A second-rower in the 2013 NYC Team of the Year, Oates made no bones about his desire to go back into the pack at some stage after nailing down a spot on the Broncos’ wing later that season – scoring eight tries in as many NRL starts.
Oates played exclusively off the bench or in the second-row for Anthony Griffin’s Broncos side in 2014, but Wayne Bennett’s return the following season saw the rangy flyer shunted back out to the flank, where scored a 90-metre grand final try that year and win an Origin debut in 2016.
The long-serving clubman has made just three NRL appearances in the back-row since – all during the Broncos’ 2020 wooden spoon campaign – and has scored 107 tries in his 169 NRL starts on the wing.
Jack Bird
After winning the Dally M Rookie of the Year nod at the end of a sparkling 2015 season as Cronulla’s five-eighth, the arrival of James Maloney and Chad Townsend saw Jack Bird featured in the Sharks’ 2016 premiership triumph at centre – but he always seemed destined to become an elite half.
It never panned out that way, however, with Bird’s stints in the spine since aborted after only a handful of games.
The NSW Origin rep had a three-game run as the Sharks’ fullback in 2017, played four games in a row in the Broncos’ halves in 2018 and had a three-game stretch as the Dragons’ five-eighth in 2022 – but has otherwise played mostly at centre or back-row as one of the great unfulfilled talents of the past decade.
Kalyn Ponga
Two Newcastle coaches have begun seasons attempting to utilise Kalyn Ponga’s breath-taking ball-playing ability at five-eighth, only to ditch those plans and employ his elite running game in the fullback spot where he made his name.
Nathan Brown handed Ponga the No.6 at the start of 2019, with Connor Watson and then fellow jack-of-all-trades Kurt Mann filling the fullback hole…before putting him back to fullback for the rest of a season that saw Brown lose his job.
Successor Adam O’Brien resisted the urge to put his marquee man in the halves, until the start of 2023 with ex-Cronulla speedster Lachie Miller emerging as a fullback option.
Ponga suffered a bad concussion in his second game defending in the front-line and was ruled out for six weeks.
The Queensland Origin fullback incumbent returned at five-eighth but that selection strategy was canned after another four games.
Ponga went on a Jarryd Hayne 2009-esque run from fullback to lead the down-and-out Knights into the finals and win the Dally M Medal despite playing just 18 games.