Knights Lower Grade Stuff

[Woody90]

25% of the roster , I counted couple of weeks back . Sticky has done a great job with limited resources IMO.

They got smashed today by the Tigers who before today had even worse attack than us…

 

[Woody90]

I was thinking that Pryce was most likely to debut when season is done, can’t make the 8 or can’t miss, don’t like the idea of putting him in on a must win game

IMO the seasons done and we 100% know Cogger will hurt us.

Best time to throw Pryce in. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t struggle defensively at least, but it at least gives us an idea of whether he shows enough that we should continue to invest in developing him.

Makes no sense to play Cogger who we know isn’t up to it. With Pryce at least there’s a chance he might do something good.

 

[Old dog]

Literally half of the Raiders FG team.

Didn’t do them any good yesterday

 

[slotmachine]

Dunno where this narrative that we'd be a good side if everyone wasn't poaching our juniors comes from, might have been true 25 years ago but sure isn't today.

The best knights juniors still kicking around the NRL are Tapine, Best, JSaf, Lucas, Young and Barney (although he went to Canberra pretty early, not sure you'd consider him a junior).

Tapine was the only one "poached", the Raiders are chock full of blokes we didn't want. You can add Martin to that next year and probably Maps when we tell him he's no longer required.

 

[Old dog]

Some of our Development players over the past years that I recollect.
Musgrove, Fermor, Crosslands, Purcell, Veaila, Mapapalangi, Myers, Martin, Rugless, Toloi.
Didnt include this tears others such as Sasagi not sure on.
Fermor and Crosslands the better of that lot

 

[PhilGould]

From what I remember Latrell, Boyd Cordner and Inglis were all our juniors?

Cordner the only one ever signed to the Knights and had injury concerns before he was poached by Roosters

 

[Yosh]

Feels like the Roosters poach our best while Raiders pick up our throw aways.

 

[Dr Dr Gimedanews]

Cordner the only one ever signed to the Knights and had injury concerns before he was poached by Roosters

and poached by our new head of recruitment I think?

 

[slotmachine]

Says it all that we're talking about a bloke that retired 4 years ago.

 

[aqua_duck]

From what I remember Latrell, Boyd Cordner and Inglis were all our juniors?

Cordner yes, Inglis played some footy at hunter sports high but never played in our system before he got shipped up to Qld, Latrell was passed over at Harold Mats trials

 

[Knight Tales]

Cordner yes, Inglis played some footy at hunter sports high but never played in our system before he got shipped up to Qld, Latrell was passed over at Harold Mats trials

The narrative around Trell - including from the man himself - is we passed on him cos he was lazy. Hard to knock that choice when you see how he switches on and off at will. That said I think he is a genius when he is on. It will be a travesty when we look back on his career as to what could have been. His strength is ridiculous and his hands are incredibly deceptive.

 

[The Axe of Druss]

The best knights juniors still kicking around the NRL are Tapine, Best, JSaf, Lucas, Young and Barney (although he went to Canberra pretty early, not sure you'd consider him a junior).

Lucas is an Illawarra junior. Played Matt's and Ball with the Steelers

 

[aqua_duck]

Dunno where this narrative that we'd be a good side if everyone wasn't poaching our juniors comes from, might have been true 25 years ago but sure isn't today.

The best knights juniors still kicking around the NRL are Tapine, Best, JSaf, Lucas, Young and Barney (although he went to Canberra pretty early, not sure you'd consider him a junior).

Tapine was the only one "poached", the Raiders are chock full of blokes we didn't want. You can add Martin to that next year and probably Maps when we tell him he's no longer required.

Even the likes of Tapine, Lucas and Saf aren’t really juniors, all were signed as 18-19 year olds so were never part of any of our Mats and Ball teams.
25 years ago the junior landscape was very different, a lot of good country lads with good work ethic and fundamentals, these days it’s all about size, speed, and power, look no further than Penrith, 70% of the kids that have come through their juniors have been Polynesians.

 

[Dr Dr Gimedanews]

Jeez the state of the Knights business sounds bloody dire. That's criminal. Even the younger guys that have come through arent juniors and there's hardly any of those.

So we couldnt even scout and recruit decent younger players like the Roosters do, and couldnt develop any juniors whatsoever like the Panthers.

I know nothing of Wests other than they were always at the top of the local league when I was growing up ( along with Kurri and Cessnock ) From reading this it sounds like they couldnt run a bloody chook raffle let alone a NRL club.

 

[Woody90]

Jeez the state of the Knights business sounds bloody dire. That's criminal. Even the younger guys that have come through arent juniors and there's hardly any of those.

So we couldnt even scout and recruit decent younger players like the Roosters do, and couldnt develop any juniors whatsoever like the Panthers.

I know nothing of Wests other than they were always at the top of the local league when I was growing up ( along with Kurri and Cessnock ) From reading this it sounds like they couldnt run a bloody chook raffle let alone a NRL club.

Not entirely fair IMO. Like the post above points out, the game has changed significantly over the past few decades, and there’s no longer really a place for the type of player and body shape that makes up the vast majority of kids playing in our catchment area. I’m talking small white kids that lack the size and strength that Polynesian kids possess. When you look at Australia’s demographics in general, of course we’re going to struggle to produce as many local juniors that make it compared to a Sydney club with greater Polynesian populations.

Hopefully O’Sullivan will be able to scout some talent from outside of our area and bring them to our junior sides to keep developing because we’re going to find very few stars locally given the current attributes needed in the current game.

 

[Dr Dr Gimedanews]

Not entirely fair IMO. Like the post above points out, the game has changed significantly over the past few decades, and there’s no longer really a place for the type of player and body shape that makes up the vast majority of kids playing in our catchment area. I’m talking small white kids that lack the size and strength that Polynesian kids possess. When you look at Australia’s demographics in general, of course we’re going to struggle to produce as many local juniors that make it compared to a Sydney club with greater Polynesian populations.

Hopefully O’Sullivan will be able to scout some talent from outside of our area and bring them to our junior sides to keep developing because we’re going to find very few stars locally given the current attributes needed in the current game.

I do get the point about physical attributes of kids within the local catchment area, but this is a club supposedly in the business of winning football games.

Recruitment from outside has been equally lame, placid, and docile to the point of laughable, and development? it's a slow motion train wreck of groundhog day. Surely the excuses have dried up? Apparently not.

I wonder what excuses they use over at the Warriors? Not enough Anglo- Saxons? Meanwhile over at the Storm, Roosters, Broncos, Penrith they just get on with the business of winning footy games.

 

[Woody90]

I do get the point about physical attributes of kids within the local catchment area, but this is a club supposedly in the business of winning football games.

Recruitment from outside has been equally lame, placid, and docile to the point of laughable, and development? it's a slow motion train wreck of groundhog day. Surely the excuses have dried up? Apparently not.

I wonder what excuses they use over at the Warriors? Not enough Anglo- Saxons? Meanwhile over at the Storm, Roosters, Broncos, Penrith they just get on with the business of winning footy

To me the only major thing that the clubs done wrong in terms of our junior development that’s within their control is the heavy emphasis we’ve put on prioritising winning trophies at the junior level which has lead to us persisting with average players who while may have been a part of a good junior side, don’t have the skills or attributes to ever made a good FG player.

AOB has made comments recently though saying they’re going to stop doing this and focus more on FG readiness so I think the club have at least acknowledged the issue and we’re on the right track.

I can be plenty critical of the club but just a look at some of the players we’re starting to bring into FG is pretty telling that we’re on the right track now in terms of our pathways. Lucas, Sharpe and even Armstrong have looked very good.

 

[aqua_duck]

Jeez the state of the Knights business sounds bloody dire. That's criminal. Even the younger guys that have come through arent juniors and there's hardly any of those.

So we couldnt even scout and recruit decent younger players like the Roosters do, and couldnt develop any juniors whatsoever like the Panthers.

I know nothing of Wests other than they were always at the top of the local league when I was growing up ( along with Kurri and Cessnock ) From reading this it sounds like they couldnt run a bloody chook raffle let alone a NRL club.

To be fair the Wests the knights have had a long standing history of doing very well in junior comps with the types of players mentioned so there’s going to be a lot of people who think that’s the best formula.
One of the big issues is it takes years to build networks, teams like the roosters and storm have built up scouting networks in SE Qld over many years, people can throw shade at those clubs for not having many locals but the lack of locals has forced them to work harder at that scouting element which we largely neglected.

 

[aqua_duck]

To me the only major thing that the clubs done wrong in terms of our junior development that’s within their control is the heavy emphasis we’ve put on prioritising winning trophies at the junior level which has lead to us persisting with average players who while may have been a part of a good junior side, don’t have the skills or attributes to ever made a good FG player.

AOB has made comments recently though saying they’re going to stop doing this and focus more on FG readiness so I think the club have at least acknowledged the issue and we’re on the right track.

I can be plenty critical of the club but just a look at some of the players we’re starting to bring into FG is pretty telling that we’re on the right track now in terms of our pathways. Lucas, Sharpe and even Armstrong have looked very good.

Unfortunately there’s a lot of politics involved in junior rep teams and it’s not just confined to us. Mate of mine has 2 kids, the oldest went to Westfields Sports and played juniors for Wenty so pretty much got earmarked into the Parra development teams, his youngest who’s a much more talented kid wanted to stay with his mates so went to the local high school and stayed with the local junior club, his oldest pretty much just had to turn up at the trials to make the team whilst his youngest trialled really well but could only get into a summer development squad

 

[Yosh]

So stupid question but what does Parr, O'Sullivan, Gardner do actually? How do their roles differ for us?