Justin Bleakley – He is a young fullback from Lennox Heads in Northern New South Wales who in addition to rugby league, has played a bit of rugby recently, including making some representative sides, including the North Coast U15 in 2014. In union he played a lot of inside centre and was an attacking threat with the ball, including scoring a hat trick against a visiting Western Australian side. In league he has played both centre and fullback, including starting at fullback for a Titans U16 development side against Samoa recently, in that game he also spent some time on the wing in the second half.
He has been named in the MM train on squad for the 2016 season. He also attends St Johns College Woodlawn and plays for the school side in multiple New South Wales competitions, including het GIO National School Boys Cup. From St Johns College Woodlawn, he represented New South Wales Combined Catholic Colleges in rugby league at the U15 level in 2014 and played his club rugby league with the Ballina Seagulls in the Group One junior rugby league competition. For Ballina, he played this year in what was essentially an U17 competition this year, scoring nine tries in as many games. He also kicked four goals for a points scoring tally of 44 points for the season. Centre Isaac Lee is another Titans linked youngster who played in that competition.
He is an agile runner of the football who relies on his decent speed and elusiveness to make it difficult for larger opponents to line him up. When lining up at fullback he always makes himself available for offloads in the centre of the ruck. One thing that impresses me is that he does not jog after the ball when it is kicked down field, he will flat out sprint to get there either on the full or as quickly as possible, thus eliminating the effectiveness of the oppositions kicking game. When he retrieves the ball he makes a decision quickly about where to look to run around a staggered defensive line or to run straight in an effort to make as much ground as possible.
To date he has not been asked to be a ball player out of the back of the ruck so it will be interesting to see how that skill develops as he plays at the higher levels, including as early as next year in the Mal Meninga Cup competition. Also his hands at fullback are usually quite safe, however in the U16 development squad game, he did drop a couple of kicks, I will note however that the conditions were quite difficult. In the first half Justin Bleakley was looking straight into driving rain when trying to catch a few high balls, so I think that he should get a pass on that day due to the poor conditions.
He is not the biggest or necessarily strongest player but will take the hit when needing to make the tackle in the last line of defence. In the U16 game against Samoa for example he certainly was not shy in terms of getting in front of some giant Samoan players running straight at him when defending at fullback or on the wing in the second half.
As noted he has been named in the MM train on squad for next season and it will be interesting to see if he starts the season in MM as there are a few talented young fullbacks in the MM squad, such as Jordan Birch and potentially Max Dowd. From a position perspective, I would think that fullback, rather than centre or wing is the likely long term position scenario, as I am not sure that he has the absolute speed needed for centre or wing, even though he does has decent speed.
From a player comparison perspective, a fullback with a similar style that comes to mind as a solid all round player who will go about the tasks set for him during a game with a minimum of fuss would be former Canterbury Bulldogs fullback Luke Patten. He will not set the world on fire and maybe he will not stand out in any one particular area but he is a little above average in each skill area that a fullback needs to succeed.