Okay mate, look, maybe you don't like my tone, whatever, but now you're having a go at me because you're reading stuff into my comments I have never said.
The point of me mentioning the lack of difference in our W/L ratio with and without him is that I think it indicates the team has to play well for him to play well, and I don't think that's true of players like DCE, Tedesco, etc. This makes him more of a "ceiling" raiser rather than a "floor" raiser. We're a team with a very low floor and seemingly little scope to improve that floor right now.
The point of me mentioning that his teammates never get enough credit, eg when we hold a dangerous attacking team scoreless for 70 minutes, is... well, I would have thought that was self explanatory. I was responding to a bloke that said everything that goes well is always only because of Kalyn. I thought that was very rough on our other players.
I have never, ever, in my life, said Kalyn Ponga is some shit player who's the alpha and omega of all our problems. Of course he's a phenomenal talent. The whole crux of my point, and slots' point, is that at the moment we're primed to go into next year with a five-eighth who's supposed to be our halfback, a fullback who's supposed to be our five-eighth, and a fullback who's supposed to be some "hybrid half" who'll be the real chief organiser who'll tie it all together.
We're getting a trial run of what that will look like. It looks terrible. It has looked terrible when we've gotten front foot ball, it's not just that we're getting smashed through the middle. Kalyn has really poor feel for playing in the halves. His game is annihilating defenders down both edges. He's amazing at it. We look great in attack when we get him into those spots and awful when we try to turn him into something else.
We needed to replace Pearce with another good dominant #7 to tee him up constantly. That's what yielded his Dally M form: the team getting really good at teeing him up. We had years to find the player we needed. We failed. And now we're bringing in Dylan Brown, and I think he's going to need to become that player who is the brains of the whole team to make everything work because I don't buy into Kalyn as the #7/fullback hybrid.
If you read over the quotes of mine from Apey, I believed we need to bring in an elite half, and still think Brown was a good signing. I'm not backing down on that. But at the time, I was working under the assumption that the club backing Sharpe to play in the halves was based on discovering he had a natural affinity for it, or at the very least if he struggled at it, we'd just play Gamble there, and throw Sharpe at centre or wing. Crossland/Gamble/Brown/Ponga is definitely a lot better than what we have now. But nah it sounds like the club (or AOB) is pot committed to playing Sharpe at 6. I just don't rate that that's going to work. How many years are we going to burn on that before tearing it up and trying something else?
And also, more context. A couple of months ago I wasn't assuming we'd still be staring down the barrel of the worst forward pack in the NRL in 2026, with no scope to improve it because of how much money we're spending on a spine which I reckon is really going to struggle to cohere. But that looks like the reality going forward.
So, in that context, the context of a club producing elite fullback prospects (haven't even mentioned Connor Votano), with a desparate need to upgrade the pack... I'm just no longer sure hanging onto the most expensive player in the NRL, a fullback, with the desperation we have in the past, is what we should still be doing now.
I think next year our Ponga-Sharpe-Brown-Crossland spine is going to look clunky and terrible, and we're going to play really slow, shit attack, a lot, and be the worst attacking team in the comp. Bookmark this. If I'm wrong, absolutely give it to me. I would be delighted to be wrong. I want what the club is doing to be the best thing they could be doing. But I can't believe in what they're doing right now.
