I always try to look at things objectively, its sometimes easy to hype up a younger player over an overseas one. However, I honestly don't see that Drinkwater offers any more than Hayes does, the big thing for me is that Hayes hasn't even reached 20 years of age or double figures in terms of SL games, whereas Drinkwater is almost 32 with 200 first grade games - he doesn't have any more improvement in him Hayes certainly does.

Hayes is very early in to his SL career but he seems very calm, composed and sure of himself, which is a big thing at his stage, Its up to Chambers & Burgess to manage his development through to first team regular - which may mean taking him out of the firing line at some stage. Its very early days for him. so we probably need to be careful to temper expectation at this stage, but it looks very promising for him.

The comparison with Riley Dean is an interesting one. At this stage I would say that Hayes looks comfortable, and Riley never did. Now that may be more to do with the support he is shown but he coaching team than the previous regime did…but that is whole new can of custard.

Can you imagine Burgess openly (and unjustly) placing the blame on a defeat on Hayes?

The man-management skills of Powell and Burgess seem like night and day.

No and spot on, on the point of it being unjust, if memory serves, I think Dean played pretty well especially offensively...yes he might have made a mistake but at least he was having go.

Powell's comments were beyond poor, not even a hint of overused cliché "well it's a collective, team responsibility whether winning or losing...." he hung the lad out to dry, although I'm not sure that too many bought it.

As long as he ignores the plaudits from the likes of us, keeps his head down and works hard he's showing all the attributes of developing into a very very good player.
Difficult to compare but he looks more comfortable and shows more promise than any other home grown half at this stage of his career in the SL era (I exclude Briers here because he was already well established.

Yep. As soon as Leon Hayes got into the first team he seemed to be looking for work & getting involved. There's more to come I reckon.