Yeah sure I'll give it a crack.
Last season ended a bit disappointingly but arguably the writing was on the wall a bit once Caitlan Johnson got injured, even before that the way the team played was basically just the forwards held their gloves up until Jesse Southwell and particularly Tamika Upton won the game for us. With CJ out, our forwards were sitting ducks against anyone with a genuinely good pack.
Tamika is gone now, so now things need to change, no more "have a good enough forward pack to not get totally dominated and trust Tamika to do the rest". The team needs to re-orient itself.
Jesse was disappointing last season & seemed to have a weirdly limited role under Jeffries, which was frustrating. There's been some chat about her putting a huge huge amount of work into her game over an extended pre-season, Origin camp etc, and she was clearly the best spine player on the field in Origin, so I have high hopes for her.
Cos realistically with Tamika gone, Bo replacing her who's solid but really nothing special these days, everything the NRLW team does should be oriented around Jesse. Jesse calling all the shots, Jesse on the ball constantly. Stack the middle of the field with athletes and workhorses and back her to kick everyone to death and create acres of space for her outside women. She's still by some distance the most talented half in the game and a real shot to be a player who wins 3+ Dally M's if she lives up to her potential. We have outside backs who are all pretty good and reliable - no true stars, but we don't need to make changes there going forward. We just need to beef up the engine room.
The pack does look a lot stronger than last start with Hannah Southwell gone - she was cooked IMO - and Tiana Davison who's a good starting calibre middle taking her place. The girls looked very fit and ready to go in the trial. But if the club had their time over again and knew Tamika was gonna walk out on us they would have prioritised keeping Caitlan Johnston. The bat signal has all been sent up that we're going to try to sign her back once her Sharks deal is up though.
The big player to watch besides Jesse is Evah McEwen. I think she's the most promising young forward in the NRLW and playing off Jesse's hip I think she'll be a real wrecking ball. Next after that is Grace Kukutai, who I understand to be a bit of a stud in women's rugby, and was destroying women's reserve grade by the end of last season - it was just a bit of an adjustment to rugby league fitness wise for her so she sucked at the start of the season. But if she pushes into the starting team as the season goes on I'll think we'll be in a good spot as she looks like a big athlete in the Shannon Mato mold.
I think we'll easily crack the top 6. But the Broncos are the obvious premiership favourites and they've absolutely blown it if they don't win the comp this year. Main things I'm looking for this year are Jesse taking a big step forward as a player + high potential young players we've developed pushing into the team, particularly young forwards. Because for me that's where the next premiership window will come from - good forwards in depth who can lay a platform so Jesse can put her boot on the other team's neck, rather than spending all the marquee salary on the female version of Ponga. The first window came off the back of making better use of the old marquee contract rules than other clubs to get Millie and Tamika in the same off-season - something like this is very unlikely to happen again. The next has to come off the back of leveraging the one big advantage the Knights have over everyone else - going on Origin form, not only is Jesse the best halfback in the women's game, but there's also no one else running around who has the potential to even get within cooee of her at the minute. She's the most talented, the most composed, the toughest, etc etc etc. We've got the female Joey/Thurston/Cleary etc. Build everything else out around that. Judge all other recruitment/retention/selection decisions around fit with that. Etc.
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