All teams are scratching around the same small player pool (apart from the odd curve ball every now and again) and every team has to make up a squad of players from that small player pool, not just a match day 17, a full squad. With more and more, AND MORE, of the payers from the pool going to the NRL and sometimes to Union that gives the increasing number of teams who are established SL teams or those fighting for a SL place or to keep a SL place an ever more difficult task of filling the jerseys for their squad.
You have to get those players from somewhere so why not have a look at one of the better forwards in the Championship to get someone for a year or two?
Look at the players still playing into their late 30s in the last five years or so: Menzies, Morley, Peacock, Ellis, Lynch, Dorn, Westwood, Jones-Buchanan... and more. All playing at a very high quality well into the +35 years.
Okay Hock has a history of baggage but maybe the penny really has finally dropped with him and he’s matured. I’ve not heard of any misdemeanours with regards to him in recent years so maybe it’s not such a bad idea.