With two-thirds of the NRL season finished, now's a good time to review the state of the 2010 season recruits. Have they lived up to the hype - and fans' expectations - when they signed, or have they been a monumental waste of money?

Here they are - the five best and worst recruits in the NRL this year ...

BEST 

5. Lote Tuqiri (Wests Tigers, pictured above): Tuqiri has made the transition back from union to league with aplomb, scoring nine tries in 16 games and ranking top-ten in the NRL in tackle breaks with 86. Coincidentally, 86 was the number of times Lote Tuqiri touched the ball in 67 Tests for the Wallabies. With Taniela Tuiaki out for the season, Tuqiri has been the perfect replacement on the left flank and has proven he has lost none of his finishing skills.  

4. Greg Bird (Gold Coast): In his comeback season after being exiled for allegedly glassing his girlfriend, Bird has been outstanding for the Titans. His form has been so good that he played for Country and New South Wales and was arguably the Blues best in game three. Bird has also done his best to bring back the bumfluff moustache but, sadly, without much success. 

3. Todd Carney (Roosters): The upside for the Roosters has been Carney's freakish attacking abilities which have guided the Roosters to a top four spot despite playing much of the season out of position at fullback. The upside for society is that Carney is no longer a menace on the roads or in public bathrooms. Carney to the Roosters has been a win-win situation all round unless, of course, you happen to be a Canberra Raiders fan. Then the situation is a costly psychiatric one that will take many years and plenty of Josh Dugan brilliance to overcome. 

2. Sam Burgess (Souths): Aside from his appalling television habits that include The Bachelorette, Scream Queens and Jersey Shores, which he unashamedly Tweets about ad nauseam, Burgess has been a hit at South Sydney. Burgess has a touch of the Adrian Morley's about him with his fondness for a big hit and his feisty, no-nonsense, never-stop style. The Bunnies would not be in the finals hunt without Burgess. 

1. Kevin Kingston (Penrith): The main man behind Penrith's charge to their first finals run since 2004 is former Eel and Shark Kevin Kingston. Kingston has given Penrith spark and run out of dummy-half which has laid the platform for the top attack in 2010. He may have lost his powers since shaving his beard off, however, with the Panthers 0-2 since Kingston got the razor out including blowing a 22-0 lead over former club Parramatta on Saturday night. 

WORST 

5. Daine Laurie (Penrith): Laurie talks a game like Ali but he goes like Butterbean. Laurie branded his former coach Tim Sheens at the Wests Tigers "an idiot" and said he will show "what a mistake they made by letting me go." So far this season Laurie has chucked a tantrum playing reserve grade, dealt with rumours he wanted out of Penrith and played a solitary NRL game. Tim Sheens must be devastated to have lost Laurie. 

4. Joseph Tomane (Gold Coast): The term defensive liability does not do adequate justice to how bad Tomane has been defensively for the Titans this year. There are porcelain dolls and four-year-old girls dressed up as princesses more threatening. He misses 4.6 tackles per game, which equates to a nearly 50% miss rate. No other outside back in the league is close to his shocking defensive numbers. His attack hasn't been much better with 15 errors in 11 games. The man once touted as the new Greg Inglis has turned out to be the new Greg Wolfgramm. 

3. Adam Cuthbertson (Cronulla): Adam Cuthbertson has spent more time feeling sorry for himself than an Emo on a hot summer day. Perhaps if he worked on not throwing stupid passes and not missing his tackles during all that time spent on self-pity then he would not have to pine about how poorly he is treated by his coaches and how few chances he gets. Cuthbertson signed with the Sharks for $200,000 a season and has played a grand total of 9 games and 299 minutes for a team with the worst roster in the NRL. On the upside, it is believed he is really helping out at the canteen for the NSW Cup team. 

2. Justin Poore (Parramatta): Perhaps only LeBron James, Tiger Woods and Mel Gibson have had bigger falls from grace in 2010. Poore was the top New South Wales prop in 2009 and parlayed that status into a $330,000 a season contract at Parramatta when defecting from the Dragons. He is now the number four prop at the Eels, was not even mentioned in Origin dispatches and was awarded the most overrated player in the NRL by his peers in Rugby League Week. A picture of Poore adorns the term "contract-year player" in most dictionaries. 

1. Tim Smith (Cronulla): Historians will one day ponder how back in 2005 Smith actually beat Greg Inglis for the 2005 NRL Rookie of the Year. That highly touted and well performed rookie of five years ago is nowhere to be seen now though. He hasn't been seen since dumping Parramatta and fleeing for England. Whatever talent he may have had has either dissipated or was left at Heathrow. Smith is emblematic of Ricky Stuart's abhorrent recruitment regime that attracts more overrated flops than the England soccer team.

(Nick Tedeschi is a league fan and freelance journalist who has written across a range of titles for the past six years.)