Knight Vision
First Grade
- Messages
- 5,066
Crossland may have some promise. He's a junior rep and the couple of game highlights I watched he looked classy. Does look a bit small though and may need to pack on some weight in the off season.
Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
Crossland may have some promise. He's a junior rep and the couple of game highlights I watched he looked classy. Does look a bit small though and may need to pack on some weight in the off season.
You mean like the Roosters?
wow he's a decent size then. I guess next to the behemoths playing these days normal sized people look small.
so now we have 2 jack of all trades and masters of none to fill our critical 5/8 role.
the issue can be summed up in one word - ATTITUDE
Whilst that's true Manly aren't in too dissimilar a situation, Koroisau and Fainu are good dummy halves but are primarily runners out of the Isaac Luke mould rather than your Cam Smith/Farah style playmaking dummy half, they've had 4 different 5/8ths now and Walker is a ball runner not a playmaker. Sure Ponga isn't an organising fullback but neither is Turbo. The difference for me between us and Manly are three fold, firstly DCE is just a better natural playmaker than Pearce, I think Pearce is a good competitor and probably has slightly better intangibles DCE controls the game better and has a better all round kicking game, secondly their a better coached side in terms of cohesion, game plan and mental toughness, our attack I feel is very rudimentary and relies too much on individuals doing their thing rather than an all round multi faceted attack, lastly Hasler has done a better job at getting the best out of the players. They kind of have more of a Melbourne Storm style squad structure in terms of quite a few top notch players and a few 'no names' with not that many middle of the road guys, we on the other hand seem to have 2 great players, 3 good players, 7-8 'decent' players and the best range from average to rookies/no names. Manly have 4-5 great players, 1-2 good players, 4-5 decent players and the rest rookies/no names. I personally think their philosophy is a better philosophy if you have the right coach and scouts to either improve those rookies/no names or have a defined enough role for them that doesn't expose their limitations.
I think it's a massive indictment on our junior development that we've been so bare in good junior talent coming through, I guess my point was more around us signing guys like Mann, Gavet, Buhrer, Moga, Guerra, etc when I believe we'd be better off signing another top line player along with 4 rookies instead of 5 mediocre players.
I remember guys on the forum a few years ago talking up Lamb and Cogger as future halves, they didn’t really turn out so good. Hopefully the next batch get a smoother introduction to 1st grade and come along better.
I'm not saying that the recruitment hasn't been good, all I'm suggesting is perhaps moving forward we'd be better served to allocate say 40% of the cap on the top 4-5 players and have more rookies/no name cheapies in the hope that (a) our scouting is good and (b) those no names/rookies can improve by playing alongside elite players. Whichever way we go it's quite clear that the level of coaching needs to improve in terms of instilling mental toughness, team cohesion and just overall gameplan.
