I have to agree here; we took a gamble on some of the older heads for one more year and it looks like a few have hit the buffers in pre-season. Reminds me a lot of when Everton had Gareth Barry; he was mint until the start of his final season and his legs just went. You could see what he wanted to do, but his body wouldn't let him.
Interestingly though, I have been told that Roby no longer running from DH is a tactical decision, and not due to lack of stamina/fitness on Robes part.
Cameron Smith ended up like that, he was just an organiser and a short passer 80% of the time, and it meant that he then had more time when used as a kicker or on the odd occasion he decided to run. It could be that Roby is being told to do the same thing to give him more time to be more effective every now and again. Smith of course played for Melbourne and had better options around him!
I mentioned Wellens as attack coach on another thread when someone suggested he could take over as head coach. Does anyone know for certain that he is the attack coach? The club’s website just describes him as “assistant coach” and has no details of his exact role. Someone who has the chance to watch training sessions might know. He’s been referred to as attack coach several times but do we really know?
If he still has an attack role, I find it difficult to believe that Wellens would instruct Roby not to run from dummy half when the defence isn’t set because he knows how effective he is. Could guidance like that be for medical reasons - to avoid the recurrence of an injury? Even that seems unlikely because Robes puts his body on the line in so many ways.
I don’t know anything about the performance analytics, but he is definitely the attack coach. How much influence he has on how we play???