With some pretty decent players around them. I dont agree Hodgson is their only good player but that does not excuse our performance.
You know this is a game that if you are 5% off you can get towelled. It was shit, agreed. But the bloke deserves a season to see what he can do.
You can blame the coach but without him we would still be stuck in salary cap mud and trying to buy our way to a top 8 spot paying overs for blokes like Whighton and Sam Williams. But I'm sure you would prefer that yeah?
Admire your passion but sacking the coach 3 weeks in is lunacy.
I don't think I've written anywhere to sack the coach 3 weeks in. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone in this thread has. I've now read that line in three separate posts.
Simply questioned whether the lack of improvement is due to player quality or coaching.
Let's be clear about that.
The entire league community understands that Brown has gone a long way toward fixing the cap and roster situation. That is now old news. Time to stop beating that drum.
However, we still have glaring holes in our top squad imo.
Do you believe that Canberra squad is top 8 quality? I don't. I think they can be competitive at times, sure. The halves are deplorable. They have makeshift props not specialist players in that position.
We saw what a quality team should do to them last week.
Now, do you think Newcastle are a top 8 team? On what weve seen so far, we are not. Yes, it is early days.
However, we still have obvious problems with our defense.
Even if Ponga shifts to fullback we still have problems with the spine imo.
We have extremely limited kicking options. That is a huge problem as well.
Our 7 and 9 are far from creative, attacking players. Nearly devoid of it compared to the better sides. The top 8 sides.
Now it has been revealed Ese Ese has spat the dummy over being dropped R1 and contacted the Warriors.Possibly sounds like petulance. But were the issues identified by the coach communicated during preseason? Warnings about playing reserves for a stint to fix it communicated before the trials? If so, then Herman needs to man up.
Brown drops him for what we've been told was an opportunity to work on some defensive issues. That's fine. But will the coach do the same thing with the obvious problems we saw last night? It is obvious for everyone to see we carry a couple of blokes who are reserve grade defenders. And they are being targetted each week. Opposition coaches know it.
Big game against Saints next week - no Widdop, no Frizell, no Debelin. We play at home.
If ever we need to make sure we are not the side that is 5% off again, it is that game.
The coach is going to be under extreme pressure should we lose round 4. We then face 2 of the worst performing sides in the comp after that - with 2 of the NRL's worst rosters. A massive 3 weeks coming up to say the least.
