Issues in the team

[magpie_man]

The thing is: we'll beat the Titans this week, put your house on it.
Ash Taylor will go AWOL but they'll do enough to stay in the contest and we'll have "gutsy" win.
Everything will be sweet again, we'll back ourselves against Easts before getting utterly obliterated. Lattrell Mitchell will score more points in that game than we will all season.
Rinse.
Repeat.

 

[Tiger Ted]

The thing is: we'll beat the Titans this week, put your house on it.
Ash Taylor will go AWOL but they'll do enough to stay in the contest and we'll have "gutsy" win.
Everything will be sweet again, we'll back ourselves against Easts before getting utterly obliterated. Lattrell Mitchell will score more points in that game than we will all season.
Rinse.
Repeat.

Yep that’s the unchanging narrative @ concord

 

[Pezz70]

Benji not fit enough for the rigors of fb. And centre is to hard defensivly to have some random pop up in there, he would get taken apart immediately. If only we had a specialist centre in reserves....

Benji defended in the centres for years in his first stint at the tigers and his defence is way better than back then

 

[Pezz70]

Thoughts on Marshal to FB and Mbye to the centres?

Mbye cannot play anywhere in the front line. His best position is fullback, he is no saviour but could pull off a Tedesco like roll in attack if he was willing to hit the ball at pace - but that’s a big IF

 

[Shredder]

The funny thing is, if they played like this week every week, this thread probably wouldnt exist.

The biggest issue in the team is the lack of consistent effort.

Its like last year, they started the season like world beaters and then just fell off.

 

[Tiger05]

Shredder it is consistency but I don't reckon we have the cattle at this point to be consistent. Benji and Reynolds are hot and cold and injured a bit. Robbie is slow out of dummy half at times. Brooks is a bit inconsistent. Mbye is also inconsistent. Our spine doesn't provide good quality footy consistently. Then we have slow outside backs.

We do have some talent though. We aren't a really crap team. We could make the 8 if the players and coach somehow get it together.

 

[super_coach]

Shredder it is consistency but I don't reckon we have the cattle at this point to be consistent. Benji and Reynolds are hot and cold and injured a bit. Robbie is slow out of dummy half at times. Brooks is a bit inconsistent. Mbye is also inconsistent. Our spine doesn't provide good quality footy consistently. Then we have slow outside backs.

We do have some talent though. We aren't a really crap team. We could make the 8 if the players and coach somehow get it together.[/QUOT


So true....we just don’t have the quality to back last Friday’s effort up week in and week out. The next month will tell us what we can expect for 2019, Don’t get me wrong, there are good signs, but I think top four sides are a long way ahead of us and most other games are a fifty fifty bet

 

[Shredder]

So then my question is. If its a given that on any given day we would compete with and beat virtually everyone. WHY cant we be consistent? Melbourne lose a star player, bring in a numpty and he fits in the structure.

Is it because we haven't had caching and game plan consistency?

 

[Tigerm]

So then my question is. If its a given that on any given day we would compete with and beat virtually everyone. WHY cant we be consistent? Melbourne lose a star player, bring in a numpty and he fits in the structure.

Is it because we haven't had caching and game plan consistency?

Good question, I think we are always in catch up mode and the long list of coaches (some were not NRL standard) have contributed to this. Hopefully Madge can rectify this.

Generally, the good teams have had long term coaches, there are exceptions of course (e.g Souths)

 

[Tiger05]

So then my question is. If its a given that on any given day we would compete with and beat virtually everyone. WHY cant we be consistent? Melbourne lose a star player, bring in a numpty and he fits in the structure.

Is it because we haven't had caching and game plan consistency?

I said above we don't have the cattle to be consistently high quality. Fonua and Marsters for instance will get caught out defensively sometimes because they are slow. Robbie is great at times but he provides slow service at other times and comes up with poor options. Benji, Brooks and Reynolds are all the same. Mbye hasn't been consistent.

I don't believe it's coaching however I do think the coach is making a fair few changes and maybe the team will gel and start to become a bit more consistent.

At the moment the coach is swapping backs to different sides of the field and dropping and changing players roles in the pack. He is also trying to work with the spine to get them to compete at a higher level more consistently. The coach has a lot of work to do.

As for the past I think that there are different reasons. We overpaid Benji and Robbie and couldn't attract better talent around them. We overpaid the big 4 and let other players go. We cut off our nose to spite our face when it came to Robbie and trying to get him off the books.

 

[BrotherJim05]

We have a lot of money not playing first grade. Reynolds, Packer, ET, Nofaluma and Lawrence combined is probably around 2.5 - 3 million a year.

Imagine injecting Tedesco, Addo-Carr, Taupau and Sironen into our first grade side right now? I'm using these players as examples as they have played for us before. We would be a top 4 team.

I'm not saying we should try and bring these guys back to the club, i'm just saying we have a lot of money not contributing to the first grade squad and we are still in the top 8.

Madge needs to be able to take a broom to the side and assemble the squad he wants

 

[Magpies Forever]

We have a lot of money not playing first grade. Reynolds, Packer, ET, Nofaluma and Lawrence combined is probably around 2.5 - 3 million a year.

Imagine injecting Tedesco, Addo-Carr, Taupau and Sironen into our first grade side right now? I'm using these players as examples as they have played for us before. We would be a top 4 team.

I'm not saying we should try and bring these guys back to the club, i'm just saying we have a lot of money not contributing to the first grade squad and we are still in the top 8.

Madge needs to be able to take a broom to the side and assemble the squad he wants

Isn't that the ever present problem with most teams? Especially WT where we have had such an incredible turnover with coaches and this has resulted in an unsettled, unbalanced squad reflecting not just 1 coach but often atleast 1 or 2 others. Our spine players are a reflection of this too. Hopefully will settle down with the squad turnover at end of season the first real opportunity Maquire will have had to inject his own type of player into the squad. Hopefully Egan and co are already on the scout and speaking with Maguire and his identified players. No doubt a player or two in the existing squad on extended contracts will also be asked to test the market. I believe Packer and McQueen have already been told that and I suspect Nofo too.

Edit- and I wonder about Reynolds as well. Not that I think he will be tapped on shoulder but I think ESL might open up an opportunity that he might just want to take an early release to go over for.

 

[benched tiger]

Brooks keeps getting targeted on our try line with high kicks, either we hide him better when on our goal line, get him to jump or give him better support to prevent opposition tries.

 

[The Charlatan]

We have a lot of money not playing first grade. Reynolds, Packer, ET, Nofaluma and Lawrence combined is probably around 2.5 - 3 million a year.

Imagine injecting Tedesco, Addo-Carr, Taupau and Sironen into our first grade side right now? I'm using these players as examples as they have played for us before. We would be a top 4 team.

I'm not saying we should try and bring these guys back to the club, i'm just saying we have a lot of money not contributing to the first grade squad and we are still in the top 8.

Madge needs to be able to take a broom to the side and assemble the squad he wants

Can't lump Lawrence in with them, he is our only long term club servant and his contract I believe comes under the long service exemption.

Grub, ET, Nofo and Packer would be chewing up some of the cap though. Imagine if McQueen was still languishing in reserves as well. Probably one of the highest paid state cup sides.

 

[Vic Mackey]

I realise Nofa has some deficiencies, but am I the only one on here who thinks he still adds a lot to the team? Made over 200m on Saturday

 

[Magpies Forever]

I realise Nofa has some deficiencies, but am I the only one on here who thinks he still adds a lot to the team? Made over 200m on Saturday

From what a few people have said,was the distance forwards or backwards? I don't doubt nofo and his attacking ability but in a defensive arm wrestle he has too many weaknesses. He hasn't been able to resolve that aspect of his game by now and I doubt he ever will.

 

[Tiger05]

I'm not sure he adds a lot to the team because he basically replaces Fonua who also has great hit-ups. I think Fonua has better hit-ups but is worse defensively because he is slower.

He was pretty good for us. There was one poor run but 200m is a really good effort.

 

[west4ever]

I think our middle forwards are as good as any in the comp, our defence on the edges and lack of speed and height out wide are our weakness. our best forwards in order are
1 Twal
2 Aloia
3 Makele
4 Esienhouth
5 Matulino
6 Clark, only played 1 game but is the future
There is another forward in reserve grade that is in our development squad, He is a try scoring forward, my point is that we have great forwards,

 

[Tiger05]

I think our middle forwards are as good as any in the comp, our defence on the edges and lack of speed and height out wide are our weakness. our best forwards in order are
1 Twal
2 Aloia
3 Makele
4 Esienhouth
5 Matulino
6 Clark, only played 1 game but is the future
There is another forward in reserve grade that is in our development squad, He is a try scoring forward, my point is that we have great forwards,

We have good forwards that will hold their own but we don't have star forwards like Burgess, Taumolo etc. I assume that the above are middle forwards because I think Matterson is our best forward. He can also play in the middle.

I don't think Clark has it. He seems to lack the leg drive that the other guys have.

 

[Shredder]

We have some good young guys coming through in the forwards what we are missing is a leader there. Someone with a hundred first grade games and tough as nails to point the way.

Its great having decent group of youngsters but we need someone like James Graham to lead them.

If we have this (above) and maybe two fast outside backs we could be anything and that would cover up the deficiencies in the spine.