Special K said:
Iafeta said:
And you can honestly say Vagana got enough ball at the Sharks or they went away from the gutless, flat style overly that Anderson employed? Watch the tapes, its still very, very flat, one or two wide of the ruck only play.
Very hard to get Nigel the ball when he was out for the first 6 weeks and Noddy was out for 3 months. Also added to the fact that Nigel shouldn't have played till round 18 due to his injury and the fact he finished with the highest amount of tries shows us that he can do things for us next year once he has a off season and a ball player with him. It will take a while for a combo to get going but one will develop.
The Sharks played flat when the forwards didn't work. When the forwards were on they had wide backline movements and it lead to some great tries(see Merritt vs Brisbane).
The sharks disciplinary problems had been greatly fixed till the final two games. Watch the sharks games after the souths and nq games till the final two and you'll see nothing to suggest problems. However at the end of the season when they were 2 points off the 8 and things were not working they had some brain explosions which they have the off season to fix.
The Sharks major problem is not having a front row partner for Stevens not being ill disciplined. Also I'd be shocked if Peachey finished the season in the top grade. Merritt will drop back there in about round 16 when the Peach 'gets hurt'
He still didn't get enough good ball, wouldas, couldas, shouldas. Not meaning to beat the Warriors up here, but in 2003 and 2002 they had Stacey Jones out for a while, between Lance Hohaia and Motu Tony - who are no superstars, they went okay and won a very high percentage of their games. Think it was 2/2 in 2002 on the road, and in 2003 they beat Brisbane, St George, Sydney City, and lost to Melbourne and Newcastle. Thats 5/7. You can't rely on one person to set your fringe players up.
For the record, I thought young Kent did a decent job.
Jason Stevens has Danny Nutley with him. There's not a major catastrophe in the propping circles. Lomu can also play there. Galloway is a decent prospect.
The major problem still lays in awful discipline. Nutley is a hot head, Stevens just does silly things - wedgies for crying out loud, what a foolish way to give up 30 metres and a fresh set of 6. Foot-tripping, for goodness sakes. Phil Bailey still has absolutely no clue on the dominant tackle. In some games he'll lay there like a beached whale and earn mountains of penalties, or in other games he'll roll off a dominant tackle straight away in sheer fear of being penalised when he's perfectly entitled to take his time. And then Kimmorley or Peachey will chime in with comments to the referee that just do not help their cause. I fully expect Kimmorley to come up with a "it should be you who's on report" Gordy Tallis type comment somewhere along the line!!!
I also would not be surprised to see Merritt finish the season at fullback, it'd be a sad end to David's first grade career because he's been a stellar servant of the game and his community, but for mine his time is passing by rather rapidly.