Mistakes with recruitment? Where? Every club in every sport only has a 50% success rate at best but Brown has been on fire.
Selections? Where? What mistake? Ponga wants to play six, it's not a mistake it's an experiment. A couple of calls go our way and we could have been 3-0. Pearce kicks a metre earlier and doesn't get charged down, the Panthers don't get a freak bounce etc. Those two games we lost were 50/50 games. I still think we will make top 5-6 even after a 1-2 start.
Watch Brown's press conference Yosh. That will answer your questions re selection issues.
As for recruitment, Watson was a gamble that has now caused problems. He's not a 5/8 and lacks a lot of skills needed to be a good NRL fullback. He looks like a utilty - maybe. Our spine is still a big issue. We are going into r4 and we still aren't settled there yet. The 4 players involved are not new recruits ie brought to the club over the off season. After 3 yrs of shit, we should have had a spine set and ready to go.
Mann is another bloke you scratch your head at.
Moga and Griff were always long shots with their injury history - we lost there too.
Kudos for rolling the dice though. Guerra was incredible last season and of course Ponga was a masterstroke.
Ponga has repeatedly said he and Brown had a conversation about moving to 6. He did not approach Brown and demand it. He was open to what the coach thought would be best for the team.
We are lucky to have won the one game Yosh. We were never in the hunt Friday night against Canberra. Never. Scoreline flattered us greatly. The side missed more than 50 tackles Yosh. Did you know that?? We were pathetic, even with our gun new recruits. The only other side to have missed more than 40 tackles in a game so far this year is Canberra (41 missed on r2).
People are worried about our attack but unfortunately there are still massive problems with our defense. Sione missed 20% of those 50 plus tackles Friday night Yosh. Our missed tackle count has increased each round. In other words, we are going backwards in defence each week.
As for our attack, even with Ponga at 1 last year it was becoming obvious that we striggled to score if he didn't create sonething. Our 7 and 9 are not creative, attacking players. Watson struggles to pass although he can get to a spot where needed to create something with his running but it generally falls apart from there. Maybe shifting Ponga to fullback will help a few more points to be scored?? But we are an easy team to defend against imo as we do not many points of attack.
We also lack kicking options. Easy to know who will be kicking every set.
Penrith are in horrible form yet got us at our home ground. The Sharks blew countless tries (four or five) and Edrick's intercept pretty much at the death saved us - otherwise the Sharks score. We really were lucky to get the 2 points in that game. I hope we aren't sweating on a last minute intercept each week to save us Hey, take it every day of the week but that was pure luck.
Now we have a situation where Sione should be dropped to reserves if Brown is serious after setting the precedent with Herman. But will he be?
