Round 1 | Knights 14-15 Dragons* @ Hunter Stadium | Thu 1st March @ 7.35pm

[billy2]

38 tackles in 50 minutes from Eddy shows he is pulling his weight when on the field now.
Early in his firstgrade career his workrate wasn't high, but the quality of his tackles made up for it.
Now he hits hard and often.
When Snowy gets match fit we will have a middle to be feared again.

 

[Spot On]

I thought Costigan was extremely poor last night. At the game I barely noticed him at all. Not even sure if I saw him run the ball at all.

Geez mate. Watch the first 25 minutes again and have a look at the work he did carting the ball up. He was outstanding. The best prop we had in the first half.

Congrats to the Drags. They certainly were the better team for the most part. I thought Cooper was the difference as far as the scoring goes. Set one up and scored a strong try. He was excellent for them.

As for us I thought Jimmy Mac especially and Boyd were standouts in the backs. Buderus an excellent start, Nev solid the first 25 mins for us. The two rangas excellent off the bench. The rest of the starting pack will improve ten fold on last night.
.
Mullo's kicking game, while good at times, is so far inferior to Soward's that they are just not comparable. Kurt just doesn't look to have that natural ability to make it at 5/8. Bennett might be able to manufacture something for him to follow. Time will tell.

Looking forward to next week.

 

[Whats Doing]

As I said earlier, Cuthbo did a mountain of work and Serc's stats back that up plus there were at least 3 offloads. He was one of our better forwards.

There is a mile of improvement in this team and will take some time to adjust to Bennetts methods. Even Gidley towards the end starting running straight and it will take time to get the crabbing across the field out of his system.

 

[Yosh]

Jeez some of those forward stats are terrible... We need more metres from our forwards...

 

[Apey]

that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the forwards... the less said about the back line the better, i think. Gidley hasn't changed. Mullen was ok, but his kicking wasn't great... i'll probably need to watch a replay to get a real feel for how he went, but he seemed fine at the ground - my eyes were focused elsewhere for most of the match. Tahu is still a moron, needs to pull his head in big time. Wes wasn't interested in Aku at all. Aku was more or less played out of the game by his own team - but seemed to get jack of it after a while and went hunting for the ball, which is great - but shouldn't be necessary. McManus was brilliant, our best on the park. safe as houses, seems to have picked up a little pace.

agreed on most points.

Is it Wes' fault that Aku isn't getting enough ball? From what I saw, the occasions when Wes could have passed the ball, Uate had essentially no room to work with anyway.

Would love to see us start the backline movement further from the sideline so we can actually drag out the opposition's defensive line. A cut-out ball (cutting out Wes) that leaves Uate 1 on 1 with a defender would be nice to see for a change.

Just on our backline movements... it never seems as if we're standing deep enough... or we just almost always run out of space before it even gets to our winger. :crazy:

 

[Serc]

There is a mile of improvement in this team and will take some time to adjust to Bennetts methods. Even Gidley towards the end starting running straight and it will take time to get the crabbing across the field out of his system.

x2...noticed Gidley running straighter in the 2nd half which was when we looked our best and were getting some serious roll on in those sets. If we can have Mullo and Boyd doing the majority of the set plays/key passes, Mullo doing the kicking, and Gidley sticking to making lots of straight runs around the ruck, then we should be looking the goods in attack.

Most of his best stuff for us (and NSW) over the years has been him running hard at the line, time after time after time and getting offloads/short passes or just making clean line breaks...most of this through persistance and fitness. It sounds kinda unskilled and unexciting, but it has worked countless times over the years!

 

[Yosh]

Gidley is most effective out of dummy half or getting the ball early and running at the line. He needs to dummy and run more!

 

[Big Tim]

Geez mate. Watch the first 25 minutes again and have a look at the work he did carting the ball up. He was outstanding. The best prop we had in the first half.

Congrats to the Drags. They certainly were the better team for the most part. I thought Cooper was the difference as far as the scoring goes. Set one up and scored a strong try. He was excellent for them.

As for us I thought Jimmy Mac especially and Boyd were standouts in the backs. Buderus an excellent start, Nev solid the first 25 mins for us. The two rangas excellent off the bench. The rest of the starting pack will improve ten fold on last night.
.
Mullo's kicking game, while good at times, is so far inferior to Soward's that they are just not comparable. Kurt just doesn't look to have that natural ability to make it at 5/8. Bennett might be able to manufacture something for him to follow. Time will tell.

Looking forward to next week.

The thing about Cuthbo's performance is the numbers are great, but we were not on top.

Wether this falls on Cuthbo's shoulders or Snowdens is something we can debate.

For mine, he did alot of work, but it was clear that the Dragons were more dominant in attack and defense. It took our bench (Eddie and Faas) to assert some dominance in the ruck, even though their numbers do not match Cuthbo's.

I think it was a great platform for him to start his career with us. I still dont see him as a starter, I personally think he would be better suited at coming into the game at the 20 minute mark whie having Faas start the game with his physicality.

I am open to letting he and Snowden go though, as they will get better with time.

 

[Yosh]

Watching the game again, Boyd is definitely gonna be fantastic to watch this year. He adds so much from the back and had some really good moments:

He won the penalty for our first 2 points of the season with some tricky footwork.
McManus nearly scored a classic WB/Boyd try down the left which was unfortunately called forward.
He kicked that grubber that falconed Stanley and we won the ball back.
He looked almost one step ahead of our players for parts of the game.
He made some good half breaks as well.

Can't wait till he gets going and our team starts catching up to his level.

 

[God-King Dean]

*edit*

 

[Joker's Wild]

*edit*

Yes Dean, we have all the edits too

 

[Dave_]

I wouldnt read into the performance against the dragons too much, we played fairly poorly and still only lost by a point. Im more interested to see how we go next week against a much weaker side and after surely having copped thier first major pineapple from Wayne Bennett. With a bit less pressure and hype around the game we should really crush the sharks.

 

[Spot On]

The Sharks have a pack that will absolutely give it to us Dave, not to mention two very good halves. Their backline however is shite.

 

[Yosh]

The Sharks have a pack that will absolutely give it to us Dave, not to mention two very good halves. Their backline however is shite.

What backline? You talking about the second rowers playing out wide?

 

[Newie is God's Country]

Snowy will have a blinder next week. My early KOTW 3 pointer tip. It will be firey. Especially if they beat the Tigers.

 

[Joker's Wild]

I think Cuthbo will have a huge one too. The shit some sharks fans are putting on him will surely stir up some bad karma

 

[Dave_]

Fair call on the sharks pack spot on, I didnt realise untill I had a look just then but as you mentioned the backline, its not much chop to say the least. With the exception of pomeroy (who lacks pace and seems more of a back rower to me) theyre all a bit small and I anticipate mcmanus and uate to have it all over their wingers in the air.

Even though they have a few decent forwards, I still struggle to see where their salary cap went. Pomeroy?, Colin Worst?, Bryce Gibbs? Now theres a forward we dont have to worry about.

Oh yeah and Degois will get hurt in the first couple of tackles so we will only have to play 16 blokes!

 

[Rolla]

I was reasonably happy with the game. Certainly a great platform to build on. We were far more conservative than i would like but that is to be expected early on given our coach and circumstances.

It looked to me as though the boys were all so worried about the new structure and game plan that they were too scared or preoccupied to show their natural flair and aggression. Once the structure and plan becomes second nature rather than something they need to think about we will see the individual abilities of our roster shine through and compliment the structure and discipline. Tahu and Mullen showed us glimpses.

A leaner Jimmy mac looks the goods.

Gidley has still got a lot of work to do.

Bedsy still has it, but is too sharp for his own team at the moment.

Tahu showed he can be a force, as well as showing he is still a hothead.

Wes needs a fair bit of work, or he will be criticised all year for Aku's lack of ball (he was up against cooper though.

Hard for Aku to shine when every ball is kicked to Jimmy and every attack dies with Wes.

Can't fault our bench, solid with impact. Hilder is sharper out of hooker than last year.

Taia was a shadow of himself, but he may need time and confidence. House was solid and Nev a bit disappointing.

Cuthbo good with out being great, plenty of work though. Snowy looked to be in more than the stats suggest, i expect plenty of improvement.

Boyd showed his quality but wasn't as aggressive, energetic or urgent as i would like to see.

 

[Spot On]

f**king brilliant analysis there Rolla. Couldn't agree more. You have said it very, very well. For mine, Snowden needs to improve his ball carrying and speed of the play the ball ten fold. He was however monstering a few in defence in the second half.

 

[Yosh]

I was reasonably happy with the game. Certainly a great platform to build on. We were far more conservative than i would like but that is to be expected early on given our coach and circumstances.

It looked to me as though the boys were all so worried about the new structure and game plan that they were too scared or preoccupied to show their natural flair and aggression. Once the structure and plan becomes second nature rather than something they need to think about we will see the individual abilities of our roster shine through and compliment the structure and discipline. Tahu and Mullen showed us glimpses.

A leaner Jimmy mac looks the goods.

Gidley has still got a lot of work to do.

Bedsy still has it, but is too sharp for his own team at the moment.

Tahu showed he can be a force, as well as showing he is still a hothead.

Wes needs a fair bit of work, or he will be criticised all year for Aku's lack of ball (he was up against cooper though.

Hard for Aku to shine when every ball is kicked to Jimmy and every attack dies with Wes.

Can't fault our bench, solid with impact. Hilder is sharper out of hooker than last year.

Taia was a shadow of himself, but he may need time and confidence. House was solid and Nev a bit disappointing.

Cuthbo good with out being great, plenty of work though. Snowy looked to be in more than the stats suggest, i expect plenty of improvement.

Boyd showed his quality but wasn't as aggressive, energetic or urgent as i would like to see.

Future league analyst assistant coach type role awating you?