Quote NickyKiss="NickyKiss"Yeah and HKR. Shame he ever bothered with that Union move, as that probably set him back a bit.'"
The Union move definitely did. Good for the bank balance but less so for his development (that’s not a pop at Thornley - we make the best decisions for our family and I respect that). Madge was furious and I think he made some remarks in the press after he’d gone that showed that.
Thornley has had a good career but I always felt he was destined for more. Never placed for England etc.. He was destroying youth teams at centre playing for our academy and he needed to be pushed earlier to play against players his size so he could develop further and not just rely on his size advantage. An advantage he wouldn’t have when he joined the first team. As a country we don’t seem to be able to produce top class centres. Thornley had the potential to be a top class centre.
At one point before he moved to Union Brisbane Broncos were interested in taking him. Would have loved to have seen how he would have turned out there.