Ponga Appreciation Thread.

[mozza91]

It was a disaster for us 3 days ago when he was gonna leave. Now it’s a disaster for us that he’s staying. RL journos are as solid as a lemonade sandwich.

 

[perverse]

https://amp.nine.com.au/article/c7f68ff7-b194-46ed-a5c9-49a35f97054e

So we shouldn't have kept Ponga because O'Sullivan's recruitment has been dog shit. Got it.

We need Brown to work so bad. It really does stink of just a massive vanity signing by POS. The longer I sit with it, the more it pisses me off. We have to give it a chance now, but christ if it hasn't f**ked our squad even more than it was in the short-mid term.

 

[Apey]

So we shouldn't have kept Ponga because O'Sullivan's recruitment has been dog shit. Got it.

We need Brown to work so bad. It really does stink of just a massive vanity signing by POS. The longer I sit with it, the more it pisses me off. We have to give it a chance now, but christ if it hasn't f**ked our squad even more than it was in the short-mid term.

Ive had doubts on it from the get-go, partly because yeah he just feels like Sullivan's white whale, but mostly due to the length more than the $$. I think Hastings + Brailey for Brown is a good trade for us, just not for 10 years. I guess contracts aren't worth much and they can always be broken if it doesnt pan out.

 

[Yosh]

Maybe Sean O'Sullivan might just be the answer for just maybe. If he comes on a really cheap contract and just does the long kicks and organizes where we go, leave all the attacking to the likes of Ponga and Brown. Have Sharpe coming off the bench like the Storm always have their best attacking young gun doing. Then reassess in 2 years time?

Still need a good hooker though.

 

[perverse]

Ive had doubts on it from the get-go, partly because yeah he just feels like Sullivan's white whale, but mostly due to the length more than the $$. I think Hastings + Brailey for Brown is a good trade for us, just not for 10 years. I guess contracts aren't worth much and they can always be broken if it doesnt pan out.

I was more at peace with it at the start of the year than I am now. In 5 years time it might look ok, but the road to getting there looks tougher and tougher.

I guess I assumed there were going to be some other signings to dress it up a bit, but instead we've just shed players and have more or less nothing to show for it other than Dylbags. The list of blokes we've missed out on is long and extensive. It's embarrassing stuff.

Supporters point to 16 year olds we're signing and say "see he's doing his job!!". It's f**king easy work to just fire a bunch of blokes and sign a bunch of kids who may or may not be good first graders in like 6 years time. Anyone can build a hypothetically great roster in 6 years time in their fantasy heads. Guiding the club there without putting the fanbase through another gutful of misery? Trickier prospect.

 

[slotmachine]

We need Brown to work so bad. It

I actually feel bad for Brown, well as much as I can for someone getting paid a fortune from now until the heat death of the universe.

I could maybe squint and it makes some sort of sense of he was coming to play 5/8, but asking him to be the 7 is just setting him up for failure imo.

He is going to absolutely cop it from fans and media alike if he doesn't hit the ground running

 

[perverse]

I actually feel bad for Brown, well as much as I can for someone getting paid a fortune from now until the heat death of the universe.

I could maybe squint and it makes some sort of sense of he was coming to play 5/8, but asking him to be the 7 is just setting him up for failure imo.

He is going to absolutely cop it from fans and media alike if he doesn't hit the ground running

Agree completely. No-one is worried about how the deal will look in 5 years. We've got 5 f**king years until we get there. If it's a decent deal then, great. Can we not just be a basket case along the way, too?

Why is it that (most) other clubs can turn themselves around relatively quickly, and not just forfeit years of our lives to "rebuilding", yet we blindly accept being shit for another however long because "the future looks bright... maybe"?

Get rid of overpaid players, fair enough. Need replacements though. I don't accept we have to be shit for years more to be good again. It's a cop out.

 

[slotmachine]

yet we blindly accept being shit for another however long because "the future looks bright... maybe"?

The same reason the juniors get talked up no end, if you don't convince yourself they're the next immortal what hope can you possibly have.

Otherwise you're left looking at a bunch of guys POS signed that can't get a game for the Raiders/Sharks/Dolphins.

 

[alexwilliams_66692007]

They're clamouring for the next story.

Headline: The Knights convinced Kalyn Ponga to stay.

Body: "If Parr - Newcastle's football boss - talked the superstar fullback into sticking fat with the Knights, it could actually do more harm than good in the long run."

"If"

So basically we're f**ked if we lose him, f**ked if we keep him according to the media?

 

[Apey]

Gus's podcast section on Ponga & the Knights

 

[HarVeeGee]

I guess the Knights are the flavour of the week with the media. The rugby league gossip sewing circle mass hysteria engine always whips itself into a lather where everything a club does is wrong and a crisis. Losing Ponga who’s the only reason anything good has happened at the club in the last ten years is a crisis, club has lost its soul. Keeping Ponga whose albatross contract is holding us back is a crisis, soul gone. AOB keeping his job, crisis, the club is too cheap to fire him even though everyone agrees he needs to go. Oh they are planning to sack him? Crisis! He’s made the finals four times in the last six seasons! What are they doing?

The club has lost its soul, I’m afraid. An existential crisis. All the staff & players will imminently do a mass suicide.

 

[slotmachine]

If the NRL was in any way serious Gus wouldn't be allowed to be a GM and do media in the way he does.

 

[Apey]

If the NRL was in any way serious Gus wouldn't be allowed to be a GM and do media in the way he does.

It's classic small-time stuff. But it was a decent listen anyway.

 

[Woody90]

I was more at peace with it at the start of the year than I am now. In 5 years time it might look ok, but the road to getting there looks tougher and tougher.

I guess I assumed there were going to be some other signings to dress it up a bit, but instead we've just shed players and have more or less nothing to show for it other than Dylbags. The list of blokes we've missed out on is long and extensive. It's embarrassing stuff.

Supporters point to 16 year olds we're signing and say "see he's doing his job!!". It's f**king easy work to just fire a bunch of blokes and sign a bunch of kids who may or may not be good first graders in like 6 years time. Anyone can build a hypothetically great roster in 6 years time in their fantasy heads. Guiding the club there without putting the fanbase through another gutful of misery? Trickier prospect.

Gus said it best in the podcast, you can’t just take short cuts by buying some players and plugging them into your FG team and expect any type of sustained success.

There have been a small number of occurrences where clubs have been able to essentially buy a premiership, the first being the Roosters and the second being Wayne Bennett’s 2010 Dragons side. They both had things going for them though that allowed them to buy enough new players on mass for it to work (for the Roosters money and Dragons the appeal of Bennett back then). The Knights don’t have enough going for us though in terms of appeal (either geographically or success wise, coaching stability wise) that we can realistically buy enough quality players under the cap for us to push for a premiership that way.

The only way we’re ever going to have sustained success is if we develop it from within. Have kids coming through our pathways that want to stay together and win a comp for the club that essentially “raised” them. Some people have made it clear in posts that they only care about the immediate success of the FG team and due to that they think POS is doing literally nothing, but he’s doing A LOT of work building our junior teams which are the absolute foundations of the club and way more important in the long run.

I’m sure if Gardner and Parr signed him with the immediate goal of winning a comp in the next few years rather than long-term sustained success, he’d probably be recruiting a lot differently, but we were NEVER going to be able to recruit enough players into the FG team to make us an immediate threat. For starters few marquees are out there and secondly the ones that are wouldn’t want to come to the Knights in a million years.

 

[slotmachine]

Counterpoint, the Raiders have been super relevant twice in the last 6 seasons while losing their marquee Clive Churchill medalist and they have done it with a whole bunch of players from other clubs (including the Knights).

Their spine is currently from manly, roosters, Titans and Knights.

 

[perverse]

Gus said it best in the podcast, you can’t just take short cuts by buying some players and plugging them into your FG team and expect any type of sustained success.

There have been a small number of occurrences where clubs have been able to essentially buy a premiership, the first being the Roosters and the second being Wayne Bennett’s 2010 Dragons side. They both had things going for them though that allowed them to buy enough new players on mass for it to work (for the Roosters money and Dragons the appeal of Bennett back then). The Knights don’t have enough going for us though in terms of appeal (either geographically or success wise, coaching stability wise) that we can realistically buy enough quality players under the cap for us to push for a premiership that way.

The only way we’re ever going to have sustained success is if we develop it from within. Have kids coming through our pathways that want to stay together and win a comp for the club that essentially “raised” them. Some people have made it clear in posts that they only care about the immediate success of the FG team and due to that they think POS is doing literally nothing, but he’s doing A LOT of work building our junior teams which are the absolute foundations of the club and way more important in the long run.

I’m sure if Gardner and Parr signed him with the immediate goal of winning a comp in the next few years rather than long-term sustained success, he’d probably be recruiting a lot differently, but we were NEVER going to be able to recruit enough players into the FG team to make us an immediate threat. For starters few marquees are out there and secondly the ones that are wouldn’t want to come to the Knights in a million years.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but it doesn't mean we have to be resigned to years of being shit again. The longer this happens, the more cycles we go through, the more uniquely hopeless we look. We peak at a few finals appearances and it's time for the same merry-go-round. Everyone shrugs and says oh well, gotta give <x, y, z new administration> a chance to fix it! And the cycle repeats.

I don't think POS is doing nothing, and if he's doing well with junior pathways (something no-one here has any evidence of bar a few speculative "next GI" signings that we've had many of over the years) then so be it. I can tell you where he's an abject failure though, and it's on the signings we've missed this year and his willingness to tear the roster apart without able replacements lined up. I'm sorry, I just don't accept that this year had to be this bad or that next year has to be as bad as it's looking either like you do. We weren't in that bad a position. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater tragic either.

What is the "a lot of work" he's doing with the juniors, by the by? Is that real or just cope? What are the changes being made? If I had a nickel for every guy that's come into our club with the marching orders to "fix our junior pathways" - only to leave a couple of years later dusting their hands off - and for us to find that the place is somehow worse than it was before, I'd be a billionaire by now. Something stinks in this endlessly repeating narrative and it honestly just feels like bullshit that the new guys say to cover their arses for a while when the club inevitably changes hands again.

We were talking 10-15 years ago about how our focus was shifting from winning junior competitions to producing first grade players. People still throw it up today as if it's some revelation.

I think it's all a load of shite anyway. We've produced plenty of first grade capable players and they're running around all over the place in the NRL (and in our own team too). Our biggest issues are in retention and in the transition from lower grade star to first grader. The pathways have been doing their job up until first grade hits.

I'm honestly so disgruntled with the club at the moment. We've been through some tough times, but they are as far away from me as they have ever been and then some. I'm sick of waiting and the same old excuses and lines trotted out. Someone give me a different vision. I won't believe in this one until I see results, they've completely burned any goodwill and trust that I had left.

 

[Woody90]

Counterpoint, the Raiders have been super relevant twice in the last 6 seasons while losing their marquee Clive Churchill medalist and they have done it with a whole bunch of players from other clubs (including the Knights).

Their spine is currently from manly, roosters, Titans and Knights.

Funny how their recruitment plan has been recruiting a bunch of fringe guys from other clubs, expecting some will improve and some won’t, but we do just that with the recent middle forward signings but that’s all wrong.

 

[perverse]

Funny how their recruitment plan has been recruiting a bunch of fringe guys from other clubs, expecting some will improve and some won’t, but we do just that with the recent middle forward signings but that’s all wrong.

The commentary was the same for the Raiders too until they actually proved they could a) judge talent and b) coach them to be better.

Players typically don't come to us to improve, they leave to improve. O'Brien has to be removed and replaced before that has any weight whatsoever to me. You can't execute that strategy with shit-for-brains running the football show. The club is STILL umming and ahhing on this super basic and easy decision. We've passed up on so many serviceable coaches since we re-signed his stupid contract. If we don't rip off the bandaid now and sit on our hands and actually let him have ANOTHER crack next year... we'll be throwing another year or two away and we'll completely deserve to fail. Not us the fans, we don't deserve any of this - but the people running the club will.

 

[Woody90]

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but it doesn't mean we have to be resigned to years of being shit again. The longer this happens, the more cycles we go through, the more uniquely hopeless we look. We peak at a few finals appearances and it's time for the same merry-go-round. Everyone shrugs and says oh well, gotta give <x, y, z new administration> a chance to fix it! And the cycle repeats.

I don't think POS is doing nothing, and if he's doing well with junior pathways (something no-one here has any evidence of bar a few speculative "next GI" signings that we've had many of over the years) then so be it. I can tell you where he's an abject failure though, and it's on the signings we've missed this year and his willingness to tear the roster apart without able replacements lined up. I'm sorry, I just don't accept that this year had to be this bad or that next year has to be as bad as it's looking either like you do. We weren't in that bad a position. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater tragic either.

What is the "a lot of work" he's doing with the juniors, by the by? Is that real or just cope? What are the changes being made? If I had a nickel for every guy that's come into our club with the marching orders to "fix our junior pathways" - only to leave a couple of years later dusting their hands off - and for us to find that the place is somehow worse than it was before, I'd be a billionaire by now. Something stinks in this endlessly repeating narrative and it honestly just feels like bullshit that the new guys say to cover their arses for a while when the club inevitably changes hands again.

We were talking 10-15 years ago about how our focus was shifting from winning junior competitions to producing first grade players. People still throw it up today as if it's some revelation.

I think it's all a load of shite anyway. We've produced plenty of first grade capable players and they're running around all over the place in the NRL (and in our own team too). Our biggest issues are in retention and in the transition from lower grade star to first grader. The pathways have been doing their job up until first grade hits.

I'm honestly so disgruntled with the club at the moment. We've been through some tough times, but they are as far away from me as they have ever been and then some. I'm sick of waiting and the same old excuses and lines trotted out. Someone give me a different vision. I won't believe in this one until I see results, they've completely burned any goodwill and trust that I had left.

I completely agree the more cycles we go through, or the more rebuilds we go through the more hopefully we look and how unbelievably frustrating it is. I can’t imagine any Knights fans out there being happy lol. Bottom line though we’ve put ourselves into this position. I hadn’t realised until Joey’s article that we’d had 5 recruitment guys in 6 years or something. That’s ridiculous. We finally do the right thing by bringing in someone with a proven track record and give him a 5 year contract so he can take his time to plan how to set us up for long-term success so we don’t keep going through cycle after cycle and people want to call him a failure and get rid of him when he’s barely gotten started.

Why people are jumping to say the bloke with the proven track record must be the problem of why we can’t recruit, rather than the club that’s been a basket case for 2 decades is beyond me. I’m sorry but I find that truely mind blowing.

On your question about his work with the junior sides, Ive been reading the MS forums a bit and a few people that seem to like they’re very knowledgable about the juniors posted that POS is bringing new kids into our junior squads “every week”. My dad’s also heavily involved in the Newcastle comp and said the exact same thing and that POS has been a lot more visible than previous guys have been. Not being in Newy myself I can’t comment if any of them will be good, but at least he’s prioritising those squads. He’s also prioritised re-signing and upgrading talent like Hopwood and Chase Butler who would both likely be gone under previous regimes.

I completely agree by the way that retention has been the huge problem, but that’s always going to happen when you change recruitment managers every 1-2 years. How the hell are they going to know who to prioritise?

 

[Yosh]

I completely agree the more cycles we go through, or the more rebuilds we go through the more hopefully we look and how unbelievably frustrating it is. I can’t imagine any Knights fans out there being happy lol. Bottom line though we’ve put ourselves into this position. I hadn’t realised until Joey’s article that we’d had 5 recruitment guys in 6 years or something. That’s ridiculous. We finally do the right thing by bringing in someone with a proven track record and give him a 5 year contract so he can take his time to plan how to set us up for long-term success so we don’t keep going through cycle after cycle and people want to call him a failure and get rid of him when he’s barely gotten started.

Why people are jumping to say the bloke with the proven track record must be the problem of why we can’t recruit, rather than the club that’s been a basket case for 2 decades is beyond me. I’m sorry but I find that truely mind blowing.

On your question about his work with the junior sides, Ive been reading the MS forums a bit and a few people that seem to like they’re very knowledgable about the juniors posted that POS is bringing new kids into our junior squads “every week”. My dad’s also heavily involved in the Newcastle comp and said the exact same thing and that POS has been a lot more visible than previous guys have been. Not being in Newy myself I can’t comment if any of them will be good, but at least he’s prioritising those squads. He’s also prioritised re-signing and upgrading talent like Hopwood and Chase Butler who would both likely be gone under previous regimes.

I completely agree by the way that retention has been the huge problem, but that’s always going to happen when you change recruitment managers every 1-2 years. How the hell are they going to know who to prioritise?

That's good news at least.