Resident expert The Mastermind gets creative in creating a replacement Corey Parker

With Corey Parker’s retirement we’ve been left without our SuperCoach God, but mad scientist The Mastermind has a plan – a Frankenstein’s monster of the best bits of our NRL stars.

Brisbane Broncos captain Corey Parker. Picture: Darren England.

• WEAPON CONTROL: Tedesco or Trbojevic for SuperCoach?

• THE MASTERMIND: Teaching an idiot SuperCoach

• INTRODUCTION: Who is The Mastermind?

There is no God! For almost a decade the first pick for every SuperCoach was easy. Lock in Corey Parker (the SC God) and give him the captaincy for the season.

Just a reminder of those glory years and averages... 2009 - 73, 2010 - 93, 2011 - 97, 2012 - 80, 2013 - 88, 2014 - 81, 2015 - 76, 2016 - 66.

He had an insatiable workrate, but the ability to add offloads and goals on top.

Bow down to your SuperCoach deity.

Years on from his retirement desperate SuperCoaches are still calling the Corey Hotline. (Yes, The MasterMind is a fan of The Simpsons).

But fear not, SuperCoaches, you don’t need God when you can play God in The Mastermind lab.

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With a little DNA dabbling and a few samples of preseason sweat the Mastermind will create a monster that has everything Parker had and more.

SuperCoach life, uh, finds a way.

So who tops those vital stats to make this point-scoring monster?

Let’s work from the ground up.

Cameron Smith’s left foot. Daniel Day-Lewis will play the part in the film.

Left boot: Cameron Smith kicked more goals with his left boot than any other player last year up 352 points. Added 36 points from forced drop outs too and a few try assists. No doubt, Smith has more brains in his left boot than most players too.

Adam Reynolds was so good with his right boot that the NRL had to make it more challenging.

Right boot: Adam Reynolds scored 336 points from goals, and his kicking game delivered 108 forced drop outs and a swag of try assists. Had his injury worries but hopefully the foot will hold up under the weight of what’s coming.

Blake Ferguson.

Jason Taumalolo.

Legs and torso: Hard to split these pins when you’re looking for leg drive and players that bend back the line for big points. Blake Ferguson scored 644 SuperCoach points from hit-ups over 8m. Jason Taumalolo had 618 SuperCoach points in the same category.

Let’s take Ferguson’s legs purely for the speed, he also had 230 linebreak points, and chuck Taumalolo’s torso on top. We need something big to hang all these parts off.

Tatts the way *ah ha ah ha* we like arms *ah ha ah ha*.

Arms: Andrew Fifita topped the league for offloads with 58. 232 points out of his 1559 total.

Nick Cotric had a league leading 258 tackle bust points. Just imagine what he could do if he took more than a dozen runs a game.

Is there any NRL rule against how many arms a player can have? I’d love to add these too.

David Fusitua scored four more tries than any other player with some spectacular finishes in his 22.

The Heart of War. There’s no bigger ticker in the NRL than Jake Friend. Picture: Brett Costello

Heart and shoulders: Roosters hooker Jake Friend had more tackles than any other player with 1016. Cameron McInnes with 908 came in next best followed by Jake Trbojevic with 897.

Let’s take the heart of Jake F with his unparalleled appetite for tackling and the shoulders of Jake T. He’s got to have the best tackling technique in the comp.

Plus we need that winning JT formula.

Just got to make sure the left foot works independently from the brain.

Brain: Cooper Cronk has never been a SuperCoach gun but there’s no one else you’d want driving this thing around like he did the Roosters in the GF.

And just to top it all off ...

Stunned mullet.

Hair: Mahe Fonua’s mullet. Doesn’t add anything for SuperCoach points but it’s fierce and flamboyant. It has to be silver though, for that authentic Corey Parker feel.

I shall name him CP13-2. Now you’ll just need to find a little room in the salary cap for this 3000+ point per season beast.

Rhyse Martin’s goal-kicking helps him out, but we haven’t got a lot to go on after just one season.

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK

Rhyse Martin: $634,400, 11% owned

Everyone loves a goal-kicking forward. Long before Corey Parker was slotting goals, Terry Matterson toe-poked 8 from 9 and scored two tries in the first ever Broncos game in 1988, now that’s a tasty SC points haul.

PNG international Martin is the current big man with a boot and boy can he kick well. He only missed two goals last year, 36 from 38. The best percentage (94.7%) of any regular kicker.

Those goals helped bump his average up to 67.8 for the season as did a three-try, six-goal, 151 SC point haul against the Raiders.

In his four games before taking on kicking duties he averaged 57.5.

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So what’s the worry with the 7th highest averaging player of last year?

2018 was his debut season. You’ve only got one sample to look at.

Also there’s plenty of competition for minutes in the Bulldogs backrow with three other 80-minute players in the mix.

Raymond Faitala-Mariner averaged 58.1 last year, Josh Jackson 55.6 and new signing from the Panthers Corey Harawira-Naera 42.9.

If Martin’s minutes take a hit his scores will suffer, especially if he’s missing the chance for those free points from conversions.

Shaun Johnson could lift the players around him at Cronulla.

CHEMISTRY COMBOS

The Mastermind lab has been delving in to the ‘Johnson effect’.

Shaun Johnson missed 6 rounds last year.

How did 2018 top try scorer Fusitua fare without him?

Scores of 36, 19, 72, 12, 44, 17. Ouch. 200 points in 6 games at an average of 33.3.

With Johnson in full swing the Warriors winger averaged 52.8.

It begs the question, who will benefit most from the Johnson effect at the Sharks? None of the Sharks predicted starting outside backs has ownership of more than 1%. Not even their own mums are picking them!

But there’s some serious POD potential here if the Johnson effect bumps up the numbers on these guys ...

Josh Dugan, $497,400, 1% owned: Has a 53.2 average after 6 tries in 13 games last year. Will he stay fit? History says no.

Sosai Feki, $429,000, 0% owned: Scored 7 tries in 13 games for an average of 45.8. His output has steadily increased over the past four seasons.

Josh Morris, $388,800, 1% owned: 9 tries in 20 games. Signed from the Bulldogs where he averaged 41.6. But has only averaged more than 50, three times in his 11-year career.

Sione Katoa, $320,200 1% owned: Injured on his NRL debut last year. This rookie was in most teams last year. When he finally got back into first grade he averaged 34 with 3 tries in 9 games.

Brenton Xerri, $169,000, 24% owned: Almost a quarter of SuperCoaches have him locked in already. The rookie was highly regarded by last year’s Sharks coach Shane Flanagan. Does John Morris think the same? Let’s hope so. Otherwise we’ll just wait for the inevitable Dugan injury.

Originally published as Resident expert The Mastermind gets creative in creating a replacement Corey Parker