Match Discussion: Round 6 vs Cronulla @ McDonald Jones Stadium

[Walk On Home Boy]

A lot of concern over our halves. Green has some nice touches (and some ordinary ones to be fair), but he's quite a liability off the ball in the . Slow, not great in the contact and not a particularly strong defender in general. I'm not having a crack at him, he's 34 years old on what must be a bit of a shoddy knee. We don't have a well rounded half at the club, to be honest. We really need Clifford early, so at least we can have 2 incomplete halves at any one time to maybe take the slack off each other.

Mann, as always, just isn't a half. He's a utility.

Green clearly has his shortcomings but we need to remember he is underdone and should improve a bit off the ball in the coming weeks. His kicking game and general match awareness are lightyears ahead of any other half at the club. Maybe that's a sad reality of our halves stocks but yeah, having Clifford or even Pearce there would definitely help.

It's just so refreshing to see kicks find the grass, turn players around and having someone who is an actual chance at a 40/20. Our attack has more depth with Green there too. Less hospital passes and more quality ball with room to move for Best and Ponga. Halves are definitely our weakness though.

 

[slotmachine]

We just do not have that. We haven't had it since Buderus retired.

It's a shame friz doesn't look like he has much talk in him, he'd be perfect

 

[Jono078]

Barnett actually seems to enjoy the leadership role but he also can have some really poor moments so until he's super consistent he is out of the picture.

 

[slotmachine]

I'm going to enjoy this because if we play the same next week its going to be ugly

 

[NoSchitSherlock]

I thought Mann had a good game.

 

[perverse]

Green clearly has his shortcomings but we need to remember he is underdone and should improve a bit off the ball in the coming weeks. His kicking game and general match awareness are lightyears ahead of any other half at the club. Maybe that's a sad reality of our halves stocks but yeah, having Clifford or even Pearce there would definitely help.

It's just so refreshing to see kicks find the grass, turn players around and having someone who is an actual chance at a 40/20. Our attack has more depth with Green there too. Less hospital passes and more quality ball with room to move for Best and Ponga. Halves are definitely our weakness though.

Yeah, those are his strengths (match awareness and kicking), and it's what we needed him for. We need consistency out of him there though, because the gap between his best kicks and his worst kicks - and his best decisions and his worst decisions - was actually quite wide tonight. Very rocks and diamonds in most facets. I'm just saying that at his age and coming off that injury, he's got deficiencies that I don't necessarily think will go away completely, and we need to accomodate it. We need Clifford ASAP, and then I can giggle my tits off when everyones head explodes when Pearce gets his spot back.

 

[Walk On Home Boy]

There's just no leaders in the team. Jones lifted us tonight - that's something that good teams can reliably expect from a good handful of players in their team at least. Pearce tries, and is probably the closest we have, but he's still not a real leaders arsehole and can go missing as good as anyone else in the team.

I love what Brailey gives the team, I've loved everything about him this year... but he's not a captain at this stage of his career for mine. Not quite there yet. Dan was looking likely in Round 1 but still has the tendancy to drift out of thing sometimes. O'Brien is probably waiting for someone to stand up and take the captaincy, but I don't see anyone really offering their services week on week at the moment.

You need that bloke on a team that everyone respects - or even reveres - that can get everyones attention when the chips are down, put the team on their backs and say follow me. We just do not have that. We haven't had it since Buderus retired.

The sad thing is we have guys that really should be leaders at this stage of their careers. In saying that, some blokes couldn't lead a monkey to a banana raffle. Jones doesn't seem to have an ego of any description which hopefully bodes well for future leadership.

I just really hope he can back that performance up. That was massive.

 

[perverse]

I thought Mann had a good game.

It's not that Mann plays bad, he's not a bad player. He's very reminisce of Kurt Gidley in that he's good at a bunch of stuff but not really great at much. Always good effort though. I just think that having a guy like Mann in the halves puts more pressure on the other half than any halfback at our club can actually handle.

 

[Jono078]

WTF AOB! He started his press conference by stating Connor and Watson were crook leading up to this game.

Why would you start Connor for the first time this season then!

 

[slotmachine]

Pearce and Clifford will be the halves in week 1 of the finals.

 

[Walk On Home Boy]

It's not that Mann plays bad, he's not a bad player. He's very reminisce of Kurt Gidley in that he's good at a bunch of stuff but not really great at much. Always good effort though. I just think that having a guy like Mann in the halves puts more pressure on the other half than any halfback at our club can actually handle.

Crazy to think that Kurt Mann is 10 times the player Sean Rudder was but Sean's halfback carries him to a Premiership.

Ah...how good was he?

 

[perverse]

Pearce and Clifford will be the halves in week 1 of the finals.

Honestly, if we make the finals from here and that is the case - I don't think anyone can complain. I do really hope that Green builds enough confidence and keeps building up to keeping his spot tbh. I'm not death riding him in the slightest, we'd be absolute mince meat without him right now. I just don't want to expect too much out of a guy who - if we're all going to be honest, maybe should have hung up the boots when he did his ACL last year.

If anything, Blake Green has done our club a huge favour to do all the rehab and come back for one more run around the block because we needed him. Had we managed to get Clifford a year early (and I think we kinda hoped we would), I'm pretty sure Greeny is a part of the training/coaching staff this year.

 

[Seage]

WTF AOB! He started his press conference by stating Connor and Watson were crook leading up to this game.

Why would you start Connor for the first time this season then!

Connor Watson isnt up to it at lock. Especially not starting lock. He gets targeted in defence, doesn't rush up to make contact and gets driven vack when he takes a hit up. Bench only for him.

 

[NoSchitSherlock]

Connor Watson isnt up to it at lock. Especially not starting lock. He gets targeted in defence, doesn't rush up to make contact and gets driven vack when he takes a hit up. Bench only for him.

Watson is always better off the bench and hanging around the ruck.
I'll excuse him for not standing out as much this week. He lives with Ponga and has been laid up with the same virus as him. Wasn't out of bed until later today.

 

[Jono078]

Connor Watson isnt up to it at lock. Especially not starting lock. He gets targeted in defence, doesn't rush up to make contact and gets driven vack when he takes a hit up. Bench only for him.

Gotta agree so far.

I think the 1-2 punch of Sue-Watson was really working, hopefully he reverts back to it next week.

 

[Jono078]

Watson is always better off the bench and hanging around the ruck.
I'll excuse him for not standing out as much this week. He lives with Ponga and has been laid up with the same virus as him. Wasn't out of bed until later today.

Which makes the coaches decision to start him and only give Sue 25 minutes even more head-scratching.

 

[perverse]

Connor Watson isnt up to it at lock. Especially not starting lock. He gets targeted in defence, doesn't rush up to make contact and gets driven vack when he takes a hit up. Bench only for him.

I just wish the club would stop pretending that Mann and Watson aren't both utilities, and that we only need one of them at the club to play in the 14. It's been plainly obvious for years. There's been a lot of pain at the club that you can sorta indirectly attribute to the fact that none of our coaches past or present can seem to figure it out (or perhaps admit it).

 

[Rod]

Heart attack stuff as per usual but nice to be on the right side of it. Probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that win saved our season (at least for now).

The attack was a weird one because it ranged between looking incredibly dangerous (especially when Ponga got the ball) to making 20 metres a set. Granted the Sharks were really up for it and didn't make an error in the second half until the very end, so that made it tough for us bringing it out of our own end the whole time. The halves are certainly an issue as you guys have mentioned, looked a bit directionless at times but some consistency might help, we've had 4 different halves combos in 6 games.

The refereeing, well it's becoming a bit of a theme for us. 3 weeks in a row we've been on the rough end of it, and in close games it makes a real difference. 3 times the Bunker overruled the referee in favour of the Sharks, and you could argue none of the 3 were conclusive at all. And that's without going into all the smaller calls (e.g. that blatant forward pass to Ramien) that we don't seem to be getting at all.

Good to see some guys like Jones and Musgrove emerging. A lot to work on but if we can just stay reasonably healthy and not fall too far behind the pack, we could have a really strong 17 in the back half of the year.

 

[PhilGould]

Am I watching a different Connor Watson? He's playing the best football of his career as a middle forward

 

[slotmachine]

Am I watching a different Connor Watson? He's playing the best football of his career as a middle forward

He made 50 tackles with 1 missed and was always dangerous with the ball.