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You really think our roster should have finished below the injury ravaged Roosters? If you want evidence take a look at our best performances over the last 2 seasons. We’re one of the few teams who have beaten Melbourne twice this season and the only team to beat Penrith last season. Our forwards beat the highly rated Panthers forwards tonight and took them down to the wire. We could have easily won that if we had a genuine hooker. How many other teams can say they’ve done that? Our lack of rep players is because we are underperforming on the field.
Just because he did it at Souths doesn’t mean there are any guarantees he would do it at the Tigers.
Them overachieving is out of our hands. The position we should've finished is relative to the entire competition, not just one team. But we have overachieved as well. Last year we finished ahead of the Roosters despite our points differential being less than half theirs. We had the sixth best for-and-against last year as well, which is where we should've finished. And after week two of the finals it's where we did finish.
Exactly my point. It's much easier for coaches to succeed at some clubs than others. Ricky Stuart and Michael Maguire won premierships at strong clubs. At second rate clubs they looked second rate. Massive coincidence.
Statistically speaking we made more post contact metres than any other side and second to the Panthers in overall metres. That suggests to me that we win the yardage battle against most teams. If you’re winning the forward battle you should be winning most games. How is sixth position “overachieving” for one of the best packs in the competition? Our overall Roster is very good. We have Moses, Mahoney and Gutherson who are all fringe origin players. We have genuine attacking weapons in the backs in Ferguson, Blake and Penisini. Where exactly do you think we are lacking? Our attack should be much better relative to how much we dominate field position.
Just because it’s harder to succeed at some clubs doesn’t mean you get a free pass if you don’t.
Simplistic analysis. Every team has strengths and you've illustrated ours. We attack well in the middle. We also kick well. But we have some glaring weaknesses, particularly our ability to defend speed and footwork through the middle. We also still have a relatively inexperienced spine, though we are certainly 'improving' there each year. Because they are playing more games.
What it means is that success should be measured differently at different clubs. The talking heads on Fox said we should consider 2021 a successful season, though I bet they wouldn't say the same about the Chooks. If Souths lose next week they won't be thinking it was a successful year either. It's all relative.
I don’t see what getting troubled by footwork and speed has to do with not taking advantage of field position by converting it into points. In saying that I don’t know of any team that wouldn’t struggle against good footwork and speed. I think Moses and Gutherson have enough experience to be challenging for titles. They’re amongst the top echelon of players in the game. I don’t see how you can just hand wave away our forwards dominance as not being an important factor in how good we should be going. Forward dominance is one of the most crucial aspects to a teams success. It wasn’t a fluke that we beat the top teams when we played our best.
Success is measured differently because it’s relative to expectations. The expectations of this side were lowered because of the collapse near the end of the season. If we had finished top 4 then a straight sets exit would have been considered a failure. The Panthers are considered an elite side so pundits are more forgiving of us losing since we took them down to the wire. If Souths had gone out in straight sets I think they would have been cut some slack as well because of Latrell being out. Now that they’re playing Manly instead of Melbourne/Penrith of course expectations will be higher to make the grand final. The Roosters had an incredibly successful season with the amount of injuries they sustained. I don’t know what you mean by they wouldn’t say the same for the chooks. I think your expectations were far too low considering the roster we had this season. Our forward pack alone makes us better than most teams and we were capable of beating the top sides on a good day as we demonstrated repeatedly.
Why wouId we release any one? We didn’t release Stefo last year so doubt we will release anyone unless it benefits us.
I'm commenting on Bryce being hooker.
You can only release players that are desirable for other clubs. Most will say Shaun Lane. But what would he be on? $350k? He’s good value on that coin. Matterson is the one I’d be looking at offloading. Marata is better than him.
