R1 // Panthers 30-8 Knights @ Sportingbet // Sat 4.30pm

[Yosh]

How good was Dobson today btw. How do we fit him in when Mullen comes back? It could have been a one off but if he keeps up his form, he needs to be in the 17 somewhere.

I hate Waddell. Worst thing about him is he looks like a mini Costigan...

Gidley was meh... That guy is unlucky as it gets though... I hope he comes back next week. Service is meh but his defense was top notch and the longer he stays on the field the less we see of Mini-Costigan.

Also, the poll on who should be hooker last week. Can't believe Cuthbertson actually had to fill in at hooker lol...

 

[Dave_]

Lol@mini-costigan because it's so true lol!

 

[perverse]

I don't know if Dobson was fantastic or anything... but he had some nice touches and a good kick or 2, which made him stand out against the rest of our rabble. I don't know if we need to worry about fitting him in somewhere, at this point.

Gids needs to retire... but he won't.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

That's a damn good prediction.

 

[Apey]

Article including some quotes from Wayne, press conference in the link.

Not sure who the spell-checker is today.

http://www.newcastleknights.com.au/news/2014/03/08/bennett_faces_big_selection_decisions.html

Injuries add to Knights' loss

Matt Logue
Sat 8th March, 07:33PM A A

Newcastle Knights coach Wayne Bennett lost playmakers Darius Boyd, Kurt Gidley and Tyrone Roberts to injury in the Club's 30-8 loss against Penrith on Saturday.
In a match described by Bennett as a 'crazy', Boyd suffered a hamstring injury in the first half and didn't return for the remainder of the match.
Gidley also left the field in the first stanza with concussion after copping a heavy hit and remained on the bench.
Roberts was another casualty in the second half with concussion. The No.7 tried to stop Panthers lock Adam Docker from scoring in the 64th minute, but came off second best and was also forced to watch the rest of the game from the sidelines.
All three will be further assessed on Sunday as the Knights turn their attention to next Sunday's home game against the Canberra Raiders at Hunter Stadium.
"It’s a tough call at the moment and I don’t know what I’m going to do," Bennett said after the match about who could replace Boyd, Gidley and Roberts if any where unavailable for next week.
"We’ve got two with concussion and one with a hamstring, so some major ones.
“I don’t know (about Boyd).
"The hamstring could be a week or it could be three but it could be more than a week I would assume.
"The concessions, well Kurt still isn’t good at the moment.
"So you’d have to assume he’d be boarder line, while Tyrone is starting to come good."
Centre Dane Gagai played out the match at fullback in Boyd's absence and Bennett was happy with his effort.
The veteran coach wasn't sure if Gagai would replace Boyd at No.1 though and would also have to wait on scan results on Boyd's hamstring before making any final decision.
"We’ve got to find a centre if we put him (Dane) at fullback and we’ve got to find a centre and someone else," he says.
"We’ll also have to find another hooker, but it’s too early for me to call on those.
"I was happy with Dane’s performance though.
"He got a couple of wicked bounces there, but if he had played there on a regular basis he would have picked those a little better.
"That’s just time and experience and he hasn’t had that yet, but when he carried the ball he was great and enthusiastic.
"Most of them are pretty ok, it’s just bumps and bruises after the game."
Of course Bennett was disappointed with the final result, but he couldn't fault the Knights' effort.
With only one player left on the bench at full-time, the team was forced to play forward Alex McKinnon at five-eighth and centre, while Beau Scott also spent some time on the edges of the field to cover in defence.
"It wasn’t what we wanted, but it happened so we can’t do anything about and can’t change that," he says.
"But I was elated with their effort.
"We can fix the things that happened today with a bit more luck, but I just thought they stuck at it tremendously there and didn’t deserve to get beaten by 30-odd points with the amount of effort they put in.
"We had a pretty poor first half with the ball, but we tackled great and the second half we were just up against it, but I thought they stayed at it.
"McKinnon played in the centres and at five-eighth. His role is a forward, so he had a very mixed day.
"And Beau also ended up out wide in the centres to sure up that right-side defence a bit. It was crazy day."
Bennett was also pleased with five-eighth Michael Dobson, who did his best in his first NRL match for five years despite a number of key playmakers falling around him.
"I was happy with his defence and I thought he was pretty brave and tried hard," Bennett said of Dobson.
"He was losing a lot of quality players around him with Jarrod not playing as well.
"He was carrying most of the pressure and I didn’t have a recognised hooker out there because I had to give Travis some sort of a break. So that made his job a little bit harder.
"I just thought he was brave and did the best he could."

 

[Noname36]

I agree that a lot of people are going off with the razors way too early. We made some horrific handling errors but you can bet we won't be anywhere near as bad in that department next week. For a fair chunk of the game they had almost 70% of the possession and they still only scored one try from an error. It was inevitable that our defence would get progressively worse in the second half in that heat when we were down to 14...especially when most of our backline was playing out of position. I usually like that people here have often unreasonably high expectations because it means we don't like accepting a shit performance...but I think the crying over this one needs to stop and people need to put the game into perspective a bit.

We had a bad day. Our handling was rusty and we had some frighteningly bad luck with injuries. However I didn't see anything to suggest we need to start the wrist slitting and calling this season a write off already.

 

[Knight Vision]

so we lost a game in which for most of it we were missing our entire spine ? I didnt get to watch the match but I would imagine almost every team in the comp would lose a match where they were minus their spine. Thats Storm minus Slater , Cronk , Widdop , Smith...... Its our first game , we will be ok. Hope the injuries arent that bad.

 

[Sacrolishes]

Out of all the bad luck, injuries and dropped ball yesterday my BIGGEST concern was our severe lack of go forward. We need Sims and Tetavano in there on rotation. Houston to be dropped. It really worried me with the quality of forward packs this year that we couldn't get on top of the Penrith pack.

 

[mxlegend99]

I wouldn't be worried about the Knights pack not being able to get ontop of the Panthers pack. For some reason a lot of people don't rate our pack, but they're aggressive, nearly all of them strong defenders and there's plenty of experience among them:

8. Brent Kite - Former NSW rep, multiple premierships and CC medal. The weakest of our full strength front row IMO, and he's a quality players still
9. Kevin Kingston - Strong defender that gets through a big workload each week. Not much for attack though.
15. Nigel Plum - IMO he's arguably our best front rower, and he is the only one at full strength without representative honors. He's tough, aggressive and will chop anyone who runs at him in half.
11. Lewis Brown - Former NZ rep. Tough player who gets through a lot of work, but tends to have a few errors in him. Could probably lose his spot in our full strength pack, but he's tough enough that defensively our pack won't take a step backwards with him in it.
12. Elijah Taylor - Current NZ rep. An absolute workhorse who supposedly spent the off-season working on adding to his attacking game. We've yet to see that, but he's certainly a great defender.
13. Adam Docker - There's not much of him, but he's a tough mofo and hits hard. He's aggressive and like Plum will cut down nearly anyone who runs at him.

14. James Segeyaro - Probably the only player the Knights feared going into this game, but not because of his defence.
16. Tyrone Peachey - More like Segeyaro then any of our other forwards. More of an impact player and not much of a defender.
17. Sam McKendry - Former NZ rep and probably would have been a current one if he didn't break his neck last year. At any rate he's still young and his best games are ahead of him.
19. Jeremy Latimore - I would rate him as the weakest of all the players in this forward pack, and he's still a capable player in first grade.

I know it might not look like an intimidating pack when it comes to attack. With Segeyaro and Peachey being the only two blokes who are known for their attack ability. But as far as defence goes, the pack isn't going to take a step back very often. Especially if you're missing your hooker and he's unable to get them on a roll.

Jamie Soward was probably the only weak defender up the middle. Wallace is a reasonable defender for a half, Whare is one of the better defensive centres and Yeo was brought in for his size and defence against BJ Leilua. Both wingers are also poor defenders, but they're really not targets for your pack to run over. I'm surprised Akuila Uate wasn't more of a handful out there.

 

[perverse]

.. and Tim Grant due to return soon, too. Don't know why people don't rate the Panthers pack.

 

[The Showstopper]

Panthers played well. Credit where credit is due. Soward was pretty solid as well.

 

[slotmachine]

It's better than ours, that's for sure.

 

[Dave_]

Really? Most other sides would have smashed us by 40 or 50 if you're being realistic. The Knights played so bad in the first half combined with injuries to several key players and their most influential player already out and Penrith were still behind at half time. At that stage I would have been horrified as a Panthers supporter.

Newcastle completed 43% of their possession in the first half and played like an under 8's side in the second half minus all key playmakers and forwards in the centres resulting in one of the most inept performances of any side in the last 5 years. Wow, I'm in shock at people thinking Penrith were that good. Soward and Wallace should have orchestrated 50 points for their side.

 

[The Showstopper]

Dave they have an entirely new look side. Soward and Wallace are learning a combination. You are right in that a side like Manly would have torn us to bits. Let us not forget we smacked the Tigers rd 1 last year and got oblitereated by Manly the next week. I am rather looking forward to seeing kids like Mamo and Minto step into the breach if the injuries to our key players are as bad as have been reported. These are kids who can actually play.

 

[Jono078]

Is anyone expecting us to beat the Raiders next week?

I think they'll get us and reach the 30 mark as well.

 

[Mr_Knightside]

Pretty disappointing, and definitely not the way that anyone of us expected the season to start.

Stuff that should give us some consolation:

- It's the first round, the Roosters were woeful in round 1 last year and won the comp, so it's not all doom and gloom

- There aren't many teams out there that would have won that game without their starting 1, 6, 7 or 9 for most of the game, it would have been a miracle if we'd achieved that

- We actually showed quite a bit of heart in the first half, the only try we conceded was off a kick and although we were terrible with the ball in hand we held them out for 38 minutes despite a lot of pressure being thrown at us, the key for future games is not putting ourselves in that position in the first place

- We conceded two second half tries off kicks that we had covered and then then the bounce totally screwed us, nothing we could really do about that to be honest

- Dobson set up a nice try with that pass to Scott which suggests he is confident in his ability and is also well drilled with our plays


Stuff that we should be concerned about:

- Kurt was pretty poor whilst he was on the field, that error while playing at fullback was just embarrassing. And when was the last time he actually finished a game? It feels like he finds a new way to injure himself every time he takes the field, not to mention he's getting on a bit now, a shadow of the player he was in '07-'09

- Our outside backs were pretty woeful I thought, they were just running sideways all game rather than trying to punch through the line or get between defenders. I really hope that they aren't being coached to do that, BJ had a terrible game IMO and Aku wasn't much better

- Our back-up options for hooker look pretty thin


Anyway, I'm not gonna lose sleep over it just yet but I don't think we could play much worse this season so may as well get it out of the way first week away from home.

 

[Joker's Wild]

I wouldn't be worried about the Knights pack not being able to get ontop of the Panthers pack. For some reason a lot of people don't rate our pack, but they're aggressive, nearly all of them strong defenders and there's plenty of experience among them:

8. Brent Kite - Former NSW rep, multiple premierships and CC medal. The weakest of our full strength front row IMO, and he's a quality players still
9. Kevin Kingston - Strong defender that gets through a big workload each week. Not much for attack though.
15. Nigel Plum - IMO he's arguably our best front rower, and he is the only one at full strength without representative honors. He's tough, aggressive and will chop anyone who runs at him in half.
11. Lewis Brown - Former NZ rep. Tough player who gets through a lot of work, but tends to have a few errors in him. Could probably lose his spot in our full strength pack, but he's tough enough that defensively our pack won't take a step backwards with him in it.
12. Elijah Taylor - Current NZ rep. An absolute workhorse who supposedly spent the off-season working on adding to his attacking game. We've yet to see that, but he's certainly a great defender.
13. Adam Docker - There's not much of him, but he's a tough mofo and hits hard. He's aggressive and like Plum will cut down nearly anyone who runs at him.

14. James Segeyaro - Probably the only player the Knights feared going into this game, but not because of his defence.
16. Tyrone Peachey - More like Segeyaro then any of our other forwards. More of an impact player and not much of a defender.
17. Sam McKendry - Former NZ rep and probably would have been a current one if he didn't break his neck last year. At any rate he's still young and his best games are ahead of him.
19. Jeremy Latimore - I would rate him as the weakest of all the players in this forward pack, and he's still a capable player in first grade.

I know it might not look like an intimidating pack when it comes to attack. With Segeyaro and Peachey being the only two blokes who are known for their attack ability. But as far as defence goes, the pack isn't going to take a step back very often. Especially if you're missing your hooker and he's unable to get them on a roll.

Jamie Soward was probably the only weak defender up the middle. Wallace is a reasonable defender for a half, Whare is one of the better defensive centres and Yeo was brought in for his size and defence against BJ Leilua. Both wingers are also poor defenders, but they're really not targets for your pack to run over. I'm surprised Akuila Uate wasn't more of a handful out there.

Dude, the fact that you made a post like this in an opposition forum suggests you are looking to reassure yourself, not convince us

 

[Baron Vo Mandor]

Game exposed our weakness's to be sure.

I expect us to be much better next week a lot of stuff came down too our injuries which would have resulted in any team getting a touch up.

But really our go forward is going to be a massive concern, we need atleast two more first grade quality props.

Aside from Snowden, the rest are substandard. Even Snowden will take atleast a month before he starts eating up the metres.

 

[Joker's Wild]

Yep, I think we will see Fa'alongo in the side for round 2. He was probably our best forward on the field in NSW Cup

 

[Dr Fruitbasket Returns]

Dudes, Saints supporter, not trolling I promise and for obvious reasons a great fan of Bennett. But as an outsider I had you blokes down as facing a pretty tough season. It looks like you've got a few forwards (a couple of them bought from us) who are getting a bit old and your main signing was Dobson who, the best you can say, played well in a reserve grade standard comp over in the UK. Plus, I thought when Boyd left us, he was poised to become one of the top few players in the game and he just hasn't reached that level so far with the Knights.

What do you reckon watching the team week in, week out? Concerned or optimistic?