I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed

[Drain the Dragon]

Interesting that we have always had a very good record against the Knights, particularly away.

And we had a great record against Brisbane in Brisbane until last year.

I guess those things do turn around eventually....

Hopefully Pricey can somehow break our Storm and Canberra hoodoos.

Something even St Benny couldn't do.

 

[Dragonsforever]

I am looking to life post Bennett. I think Steve Price and all the new signings will do just fine. Keep the faith.

 

[Cagey Mac]

I'm interested to see what kind of team Bennett will produce next year and I hope we have the wood on them like Brisbane have had on us recently.

Good post!

• Our DH play was ordinary save for a little opportunistic work and solid defence from Rein. Our forwards were getting the ball well before the ad line and being targeted because our play was predictable
• We had more players in Origin than almost all of the final four combined and we were drained
• Our attack and defence post Origin were fine in the first half most of the games that we lost (remember by very narrow margins) but we ran out of puff and surrendered leads and were pipped at the post
• Simple errors cost us as much as anything else and without them we’d have been playing Manly last weekend
• We lost composure and bombed a number of opportunities

In 2012

• We replace Boyd with Moltzen or Nightingale or Stanley or Vidot
• We replace Gasnier with one of the Stanley boys or Vidot
• Both Boyd and Gaz went AWOL during a number of our losses and neither set the world on fire at all in the 2nd half of the season. I’m more than happy with the trade
• In 2011 options for half were Hornby or Fein in 2012 it’s Hornby, Moltzen or King
• Josh Miller is your walk-up Saffy replacement
• Ah Mau, Matthews, Vea and Latimore will all keep the rest of our forwards honest as they compete for positions in the 17 and they’re all hard men
• If Vidot’s head is in the right place and I’m betting that it will be, he could be anything.

But as Minh says in his post, it’s all going to come done to us having a slick dummy half

Long live the King!

 

[TheRev]

Also a lot of teams are taking pressure off the forwards by moving the ball wide early this usually eats up plenty of metres. They also have very clever dummy half play like Cameron Smith who takes the ball up to the line before using good select passing as well. Can't wait to get a full season of better dummy half play through King, Rein or even Fein if he can recapture form. I think King might be the man.

Back end of the year, our backs were doing a lot of hit-up work, as was Creagh, probably for the wrong reasons, but I was very glad to see us spreading it though, because I was getting tired of making no metres with 1 out runs up the middle against a compressed defence.

It only takes 1 clever run to get momentum and then a great set of 6, agree with you, lets hope King or Rein step up in 2012.

 

[nrlnrl]

Maybe the addition of Matt Shirvington to the Performance Department will add to the senior players speed & also find a real flyer in the Toyota Cup or younger rep teams.

 

[grouch]

Good post!

• Our DH play was ordinary save for a little opportunistic work and solid defence from Rein. Our forwards were getting the ball well before the ad line and being targeted because our play was predictable
• We had more players in Origin than almost all of the final four combined and we were drained
• Our attack and defence post Origin were fine in the first half most of the games that we lost (remember by very narrow margins) but we ran out of puff and surrendered leads and were pipped at the post
• Simple errors cost us as much as anything else and without them we’d have been playing Manly last weekend
• We lost composure and bombed a number of opportunities

In 2012

• We replace Boyd with Moltzen or Nightingale or Stanley or Vidot
• We replace Gasnier with one of the Stanley boys or Vidot
• Both Boyd and Gaz went AWOL during a number of our losses and neither set the world on fire at all in the 2nd half of the season. I’m more than happy with the trade
• In 2011 options for half were Hornby or Fein in 2012 it’s Hornby, Moltzen or King
• Josh Miller is your walk-up Saffy replacement
• Ah Mau, Matthews, Vea and Latimore will all keep the rest of our forwards honest as they compete for positions in the 17 and they’re all hard men
• If Vidot’s head is in the right place and I’m betting that it will be, he could be anything.

But as Minh says in his post, it’s all going to come done to us having a slick dummy half

Long live the King!

And that is a great post

 

[Rob Dragon]

I think another forgotten issue has been how draining the relentless and suffocating nature of the Bennett game plan can be on his own team as well as the opposition. It is simply impossible to keep up this grind for more than two seasons and we have wilted with it in the third season. I have said before that we have gained very few "cheap" wins over the last three years. Most of our wins have come from relentless suffocation of the opposition for 60 minutes before running away at the end of the game. Some other teams have been able to conjure up "cheap" wins by blowing other teams off the park early and the sting just dissipates out of the game from the 30 minute mark. Mentally you can get a rest out of those games, but no such advantage was available to Saints these last few years. I am really hoping we embrace another game plan for the enxt few years becasue the game has moved on. Let's see how Bennett goes in Newcastle with this same game plan.

 

[TheRev]

Cant really agree with that.. great defence is what every team strives for, and what wins premierships.. most teams just cant pull it off.. its obviously damn hard to do.

We did for most of the 3 years, and next year with a different team roster it will be interesting to see if we have the individual talent and discipline to keep it up.

 

[Drain the Dragon]

People are underestimating what a toll Origin took on us in the back half of the year.

The comment was made (can't recall who, maybe Creagh or Soward) that preparing and playing one origin game is the equivalent of preparing and playing two club games.

Not convinced we 'wilted' due to the Bennett coaching tactics at all.....

 

[Mr Red]

not convinced origin was the problem either...
we did have a couple of bye weekends thrown in to recover..
for years teams like brisbane, melbourne and the eagles have had numerous origin reps and although they take a hit over origin time, by the end of the season they have always recovered and are firing again in time for the finals..

 

[Drain the Dragon]

We recovered to a degree as well, winning our last 2 club games and only a golden point loss away from the prelim final.

My point was that we had an unprecedented number of players involved in Origin compared to recent years for ANY club, including Broncs, Storm or Manly...

 

[Cagey Mac]

not convinced origin was the problem either...
we did have a couple of bye weekends thrown in to recover..
for years teams like brisbane, melbourne and the eagles have had numerous origin reps and although they take a hit over origin time, by the end of the season they have always recovered and are firing again in time for the finals..

Drill a little deeper Red
We lost five on the trot
All were 2nd half fades
By an average of less than one try per game
On the back of Sowie's worst goal kicking
Without key players due to injuries to Creagh, Gaz, Scott and Morris and I think Coops for a game or two

Big leads turned into small losses due to lack of physical endurance and mental focus.

The teams that we played were all playing on the back of sustained periods of rest from the sporadic nature of Origin induced scheduling.

Origin had a massive impact
Brisbane played out of their skins to beat us by a solitary point kicked by their hero with a busted face. Otherwise we're there on Sunday. IMHO

 

[Minh]

I think Sowie's bad goal kicking form really affected the team, especially when we rely on an accumulation of points through penalty goals and not that many try's, it badly affected our strangulation style of play where points are at a premium, I definately think that his injuries were the start of the problem going back to the back spasm he had against the Tigers on kick off just before the finals. He did nail a beauty to tie up the Broncos finals game in the end though.

 

[grouch]

Drill a little deeper Red

That's all too hard. Much easier to finger point and lay blame at people

 

[Mr Red]

That's all too hard. Much easier to finger point and lay blame at people

grouch you're simply a knob..

where is there any laying blame in my comment?
"not convinced origin was the problem either...
we did have a couple of bye weekends thrown in to recover..
for years teams like brisbane, melbourne and the eagles have had numerous origin reps and although they take a hit over origin time, by the end of the season they have always recovered and are firing again in time for the finals.."

cagey has some valid points, however i still think origin was not solely to blame ... even players not involved in origin were flat and seemed to be making fundamental mistakes during this period.. there was a definite attitude problem across the team, particularly with guys like soward, hunt and weyman so to me this indicates something behind the scenes was happening..

cagey has proven with most of his posts to be on the ball, there is nothing wrong with a bit of discussion and disagreement time to time... thats why its a forum..

 

[Cagey Mac]

grouch you're simply a knob..

where is there any laying blame in my comment?
"not convinced origin was the problem either...
we did have a couple of bye weekends thrown in to recover..
for years teams like brisbane, melbourne and the eagles have had numerous origin reps and although they take a hit over origin time, by the end of the season they have always recovered and are firing again in time for the finals.."

cagey has some valid points, however i still think origin was not solely to blame ... even players not involved in origin were flat and seemed to be making fundamental mistakes during this period.. there was a definite attitude problem across the team, particularly with guys like soward, hunt and weyman so to me this indicates something behind the scenes was happening..

cagey has proven with most of his posts to be on the ball, there is nothing wrong with a bit of discussion and disagreement time to time... thats why its a forum..

I’d say Soward’s problem was Origin related and the lack of confidence he experienced away from Bennett
Dan Hunt was trying way too hard, giving away silly penalties, this IMO, brought about a lack of focus and it started to snowball.
Opposition teams were much better at reading our DH plays and Weyman was more of a target in ’11 generally, his numbers substantially down on ‘10

Who knows what ’12 will bring
Less pressure at Origin times is practically a certainty
Manly and Newcastle will be targets.

If we have a relatively injury free year we’ll do okay
I’ll have to admit though that this is perhaps an area of my greatest concern with the end of the Bennett / Hickman era
New strength and conditioning coaches, new rehab protocols and some bodies out there that aren’t as young as they use to be
Hornby, Coops and Young, Weyman, Moltzen, Hunt, Creagh, the Stanley Boys, Goodwin and Morris, all had injury concerns in ’10 and an holistic management program, almost nurturing if you like, may be required. I hope that we have a very good team in place and that Albert has done his due diligence and looked at the overall makeup of the team from a durability perspective

 

[Drain the Dragon]

Looking at our squad, I worry about our depth in the outside backs if we do cop a bad run of injuries.

We've only really bolstered the numbers by one: Boyd and Gaz gone, Moltzen (maybe??), Vidot and C Stanley in.

I know the rep season hurt us last season meaning we had to call on McKinnon and Simmonds. And look what happened to the back half of our season....

For us to be top 4 contenders, keeping the injury toll down is a must next year.

 

[Cagey Mac]

Looking at our squad, I worry about our depth in the outside backs if we do cop a bad run of injuries.

We've only really bolstered the numbers by one: Boyd and Gaz gone, Moltzen (maybe??), Vidot and C Stanley in.

I know the rep season hurt us last season meaning we had to call on McKinnon and Simmonds. And look what happened to the back half of our season....

For us to be top 4 contenders, keeping the injury toll down is a must next year.

So we lost Gaz and Boyd
We have the following back available to fill seven spots

Cooper
Cummins
Goodwin
Hornby
Moltzen
Morris
Nightingale
K. Stanley
C. Stanley
Soward
Vidot
Plus anyone else we bring up from this year’s NYC squad (others?)

Given the mandates that I think Price has (a. build a team for the future b. make them exciting c. make it a team with X-factor)



My team may well look like this

• Cummins (If this kid replicate anything like his late NYC season form he’ll pick himself. He turns 19 in January)
• Nightingale (Best winger in the NRL)
• K. Stanley (Deserves first go at the job)
• Cooper© (Will lead by example)
• Morris (Best finisher in the game)
• Soward (The steadying hand)
• Moltzen (A better option than BH)
• Merrin (A year older, tougher, hungrier and fitter)
• King (X-factor DH)
• Weyman (Big, fast and strong and will benefit from King’s presence)
• Scott (Best one on one defender in the game)
• Creagh (Another who will benefit from King’s DH play)
• C. Stanley (IMO his natural position; fast and hard to handle)
• Young (30-40 minutes a game will help him through the season)
• Hunt (Not performing as well as Merrin but a sensational bench prospect)
• Au Mau (4th prop option and looked upon favourably)
• De Belin (The future in the pack)

That leaves Hornby and Goodwin and Vidot our of the backline (Hornby will be there, my example is to illustrate depth and realistically, my druthers)
Chase Stanley is also available as is Scott though as a fill-in only IMO as Beau lacks the genuine pace required of a centre
It also leaves Prior, Fein and Rein out too and Fein or King can play half if required