What's new
The Front Row Forums

Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Round 10 Panthers V Storm

WestyLife

First Grade
Messages
6,086
A group of men in their late teens early twenties, an over-supply of testosterone, in prime physical condition, plenty of money, a sprinkling of celebrity, what could possibly go wrong?

I can tell you that in my seven years in the British Airborne forces we only had two of those ingredients, testosterone and prime physical condition and we had every misdemeanour the NRL players have reportedly done covered and then some. All except the filming sex malarkey, mobile phones didn't exist in the early 80's. I actually shudder to think what we would have been like if we added celebrity and money to the mix.

NRL players really are no worse than most groups of young men, we just get to hear about it because it sells newspapers.

That's the price of having a job in the public eye for better or worse.
 

Pomoz

Bench
Messages
2,856
@Pomoz Why do you hate us homosexuals?
Huh? Perhaps you can quote me where I said that, or implied it. Life's too short to hate and I certainly don't hate homosexuals.

On reflection, I know I said life's too short to hate, but I certainly hate politicians, lemon peel in raisin bread (for the love of God, why is it in there?), rocket lettuce, violence, racism, wealthy greedy people (hello Mr Trump, how you doing), religious organisations and bigotry.
 

GulgongPanther

Juniors
Messages
7
Probably all of the above. I haven't seen the ruthless side come out this year. Could just be a bit of going through the motions. I was just shocked to see Cleary for example so far down on tackle %.
Sorry but IMHO our Panthers have never been what I would call "ruthless" I feel they only do what's needed and ease up in intensity.
The way the Storm play and put teams to the sword even when in front that's what I call ruthless
 

Black Diamond

Juniors
Messages
1,061
Perham and Opacic are not the future. They are barely NRL level players. Sivo and Waqa are far better options.

Anyhows I was responding to Smug suggesting Eels cant win it. I'd put the Storm and Panthers infront of them. But we are still a chance. And was stating that 3 guys would further improve the side to the one who beat you on Friday. Along with the fact Storm and panthers could get injuries or bad luck in finals.

Bar the top 2 sides if I had to pick another side then I'd go with the Eels. They've beaten the Storm 4 x straight and also the last 3 games against you guys have been a difference of 2 points and 1 point.
They will choke in the finals as usual.
 

BossleyPanther

Juniors
Messages
2,117
Why would Cobbo be driving around unlicenced..in an unregistered ,uninsured vehicle when he is earning good money?
I have recently learnt that it is legal, however there is steps towards this. They are called Live Life Claimits. I started setting one up, howver I will not be using it to drive with no license moreso for paying 0 tax.
 

Iamback

Coach
Messages
16,988
Sorry but IMHO our Panthers have never been what I would call "ruthless" I feel they only do what's needed and ease up in intensity.
The way the Storm play and put teams to the sword even when in front that's what I call ruthless

This is true.

Getting TPJ was a bad ass move. Aside from that I'd agree
 

The_Frog

First Grade
Messages
6,390

By Adam Pengilly

May 13, 2022 — 3.45pm

It’s easy to think Nathan Cleary is the best player in the NRL.

He has a sixth sense in being able to read a rugby league game, knowing exactly how to move his players and the ball around the park, suffocating the life out of rival teams whether by landing kicks on a five-cent piece, or opening up defences with sleight of hand.

But what if he isn’t even the best player in his team?
What if it was a bloke who has the brain of Cleary, but a body which dictates he has to make 40 to 50 tackles a game and charge for about 150 running metres as well, accelerating, stepping and trying to offload?

Like all magic tricks, Isaah Yeo’s greatest gift is one you can’t really see: what’s going on inside his brain.
And it’s the evolution of a player who is quietly breaking Norm Provan’s records which is changing the way locks play.

“It’s kind of like having another halfback out there,” Cleary says before the Panthers’ Magic Round blockbuster against Melbourne on Saturday night.
“We bounce ideas off each other and it’s pretty cool. Talking to him, we both see the game the exact same way. For someone to play in the middle as long as he does, making all those tackles and runs, and to still have his head on seeing the game the way we want to ... is pretty incredible and quite unique. He’s a freak.”

Trying to understand what sets Yeo apart from other forwards is not easy.
Firstly, the boy from Dubbo is incredibly humble and prefers to deflect to teammates for any credit. Earlier this year, he put together one of the greatest individual stretches of form - amassing a maximum 12 Dally M points from Penrith’s first four games.
Secondly, Yeo always just stops himself short of yielding too much information about the nuances of Penrith’s attack around the ruck, knowing the subtleties will be crucial to their back-to-back title bid this year.
But what is easy to understand is just how Yeo might be the perfect NRL prototype, big and mobile enough to play in the middle, but with the smarts of a halfback to work alongside Cleary in the faster-paced six-again era.
“The main thing he’s just really simplified his job,” NSW State of Origin coach Brad Fittler says. “It looks complicated, but it’s simple in his own head.”

It’s a testament to Yeo that, barring injury, he will be one of the first names on Fittler’s team sheet for game one of the State of Origin series. Fittler is blessed with gun No.13s like Victor Radley and Jake Trbojevic, yet none will displace Yeo.
When former Manly and current Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett returned to the Panthers as an assistant to Ivan Cleary in 2020, he came with a special project for Yeo.

Barrett had been working with Trbojevic on the evolution of the lock role. The No.13 would often stand at first receiver and pose a two-fold problem for the defence: they were big enough to run and make metres by busting tackles through the middle, but also skilful enough to know where space was and feed the ball to their halves, who could stand wider from the ruck.
“I want you to be my Jake,” Barrett told Yeo.

He not only became that, but a whole lot more.
“I feel like [the position] is having a bigger impact on the game now,” Yeo says. “Just about every 13, regardless of whether they’re a ball-playing role or front-rower, are extremely important to their side. I’m very different to someone like Tino [Fa’asuamaleaui], but Tino is very important to how the Titans play and their style. I just feel the ball-playing role adds another dimension.”

It’s a tricky balance, though.
Radley speaks of trying to understand when your team needs grit from the lock, rather than guile. By his own admission the Roosters hitman has gone for the latter a bit too much on occasions this year.

“I need to take a step backwards and make sure I’m thinking, ‘run first’,” Radley says. “But at the same time not putting my blinkers on. I’ve been working on that this year where I want to run the ball more, break more tackles rather than just thinking about the other side of it.
“He [Yeo] is the benchmark. Penrith are the benchmark. He’s got a really good balance at the moment where you don’t know if he’s going to pass, or he’s going to run. That’s really hard to defend.”
So, is Yeo’s first instinct to run rather than pass?
“It depends,” he says. “The position is as a forward and you still need to be able to run. You have to gauge what the team needs, or how you think the game is flowing, and I always try to do that in the first 10 to 15 minutes.
“The game plan is the first 10-15 minutes, then you’re making adjustments on the run and I’ll talk to Nathan about what we’re seeing.”

Yeo started as a gangly kid out in the backline, but gradually worked his way closer to the middle. He was spotted by Penrith’s veteran recruitment chief Jim Jones, who was watching a Catholic schoolboys competition at Forbes.
“They were short of people and they said, ‘do you want to be a selector’,” Jones recalled.

He said he originally declined but was convinced to take the role. “They said, ‘who do you like?’ I said, ‘I like that big, tall 14 (Yeo)’.
But when the team was picked Yeo was not part of the squad.

“I said, ‘where is he? He’s the only one I liked’.”
Yeo was Penrith’s first regional product from the central west to come to Sydney under Phil Gould and Matt Cameron’s pathways plan, blazing a trail for the likes of Matt Burton, Charlie Staines, Brent Naden and Liam Martin.

Jones said the country demeanour of Yeo survives to this day: “The way he was when he came here seven or eight years ago is the way he is now.”
With the more experience Yeo got in various roles, the more he understood what ball receivers wanted from their playmakers.

“The different positions have probably helped me because I know how I used to like getting the ball,” Yeo says. “That means I can help my other teammates around me as well with the way the position is going. I try to relate to what I feel works for me.”
So enamoured with Yeo’s all-energy game - “I try not to show it as much, but there is a fair few conversations going on in my head when I’m tired” - Fittler has named his salvia plants after the NRL’s most dependable player. He calls them his “Isaahs”.
“They’re just machines,” Fittler says, “They just grow out of control, flowering non-stop. I found it easier if I named the plants, I would be able to remember them.”
And if he had plants with the personality of Josh Addo-Carr?
“We’d sell them,” Fittler laughs.

But it’s exactly why Yeo is so valuable to not only Penrith, but the Blues.

While Jarome Luai, Stephen Crichton and Brian To’o carry boomboxes into the club’s academy and play pick-up basketball games, and Addo-Carr is the life of every State of Origin camp, Yeo can be found reading books on successful sporting dynasties. Cleary jokingly refers to him as “grandpa”.
He’s studied Tom Brady’s New England Patriots success (Yeo and Cleary emulated Brady and Rob Gronkowski’s viral “Bad Boys For Life” video after their NRL title), and the All Blacks’ rugby union dominance.
Rugby league’s most successful dynasty, the Dragons’ 11 straight premierships in the 1950s and 1960s, had Provan steering the ship. The most number of games Provan won in any 50-game stretch during that period was 47, according to stats guru David Middleton. Before last week’s loss to Parramatta, the Panthers had won 48 of their last 50 games in which Yeo played.

It was the greatest winning run of any player in rugby league history.
And it might just make him the most important player to his team
 

Munky

Coach
Messages
10,193

By Adam Pengilly

May 13, 2022 — 3.45pm

It’s easy to think Nathan Cleary is the best player in the NRL.

He has a sixth sense in being able to read a rugby league game, knowing exactly how to move his players and the ball around the park, suffocating the life out of rival teams whether by landing kicks on a five-cent piece, or opening up defences with sleight of hand.

But what if he isn’t even the best player in his team?
What if it was a bloke who has the brain of Cleary, but a body which dictates he has to make 40 to 50 tackles a game and charge for about 150 running metres as well, accelerating, stepping and trying to offload?

Like all magic tricks, Isaah Yeo’s greatest gift is one you can’t really see: what’s going on inside his brain.
And it’s the evolution of a player who is quietly breaking Norm Provan’s records which is changing the way locks play.

“It’s kind of like having another halfback out there,” Cleary says before the Panthers’ Magic Round blockbuster against Melbourne on Saturday night.
“We bounce ideas off each other and it’s pretty cool. Talking to him, we both see the game the exact same way. For someone to play in the middle as long as he does, making all those tackles and runs, and to still have his head on seeing the game the way we want to ... is pretty incredible and quite unique. He’s a freak.”

Trying to understand what sets Yeo apart from other forwards is not easy.
Firstly, the boy from Dubbo is incredibly humble and prefers to deflect to teammates for any credit. Earlier this year, he put together one of the greatest individual stretches of form - amassing a maximum 12 Dally M points from Penrith’s first four games.
Secondly, Yeo always just stops himself short of yielding too much information about the nuances of Penrith’s attack around the ruck, knowing the subtleties will be crucial to their back-to-back title bid this year.
But what is easy to understand is just how Yeo might be the perfect NRL prototype, big and mobile enough to play in the middle, but with the smarts of a halfback to work alongside Cleary in the faster-paced six-again era.
“The main thing he’s just really simplified his job,” NSW State of Origin coach Brad Fittler says. “It looks complicated, but it’s simple in his own head.”

It’s a testament to Yeo that, barring injury, he will be one of the first names on Fittler’s team sheet for game one of the State of Origin series. Fittler is blessed with gun No.13s like Victor Radley and Jake Trbojevic, yet none will displace Yeo.
When former Manly and current Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett returned to the Panthers as an assistant to Ivan Cleary in 2020, he came with a special project for Yeo.

Barrett had been working with Trbojevic on the evolution of the lock role. The No.13 would often stand at first receiver and pose a two-fold problem for the defence: they were big enough to run and make metres by busting tackles through the middle, but also skilful enough to know where space was and feed the ball to their halves, who could stand wider from the ruck.
“I want you to be my Jake,” Barrett told Yeo.

He not only became that, but a whole lot more.
“I feel like [the position] is having a bigger impact on the game now,” Yeo says. “Just about every 13, regardless of whether they’re a ball-playing role or front-rower, are extremely important to their side. I’m very different to someone like Tino [Fa’asuamaleaui], but Tino is very important to how the Titans play and their style. I just feel the ball-playing role adds another dimension.”

It’s a tricky balance, though.
Radley speaks of trying to understand when your team needs grit from the lock, rather than guile. By his own admission the Roosters hitman has gone for the latter a bit too much on occasions this year.

“I need to take a step backwards and make sure I’m thinking, ‘run first’,” Radley says. “But at the same time not putting my blinkers on. I’ve been working on that this year where I want to run the ball more, break more tackles rather than just thinking about the other side of it.
“He [Yeo] is the benchmark. Penrith are the benchmark. He’s got a really good balance at the moment where you don’t know if he’s going to pass, or he’s going to run. That’s really hard to defend.”
So, is Yeo’s first instinct to run rather than pass?
“It depends,” he says. “The position is as a forward and you still need to be able to run. You have to gauge what the team needs, or how you think the game is flowing, and I always try to do that in the first 10 to 15 minutes.
“The game plan is the first 10-15 minutes, then you’re making adjustments on the run and I’ll talk to Nathan about what we’re seeing.”

Yeo started as a gangly kid out in the backline, but gradually worked his way closer to the middle. He was spotted by Penrith’s veteran recruitment chief Jim Jones, who was watching a Catholic schoolboys competition at Forbes.
“They were short of people and they said, ‘do you want to be a selector’,” Jones recalled.

He said he originally declined but was convinced to take the role. “They said, ‘who do you like?’ I said, ‘I like that big, tall 14 (Yeo)’.
But when the team was picked Yeo was not part of the squad.

“I said, ‘where is he? He’s the only one I liked’.”
Yeo was Penrith’s first regional product from the central west to come to Sydney under Phil Gould and Matt Cameron’s pathways plan, blazing a trail for the likes of Matt Burton, Charlie Staines, Brent Naden and Liam Martin.

Jones said the country demeanour of Yeo survives to this day: “The way he was when he came here seven or eight years ago is the way he is now.”
With the more experience Yeo got in various roles, the more he understood what ball receivers wanted from their playmakers.

“The different positions have probably helped me because I know how I used to like getting the ball,” Yeo says. “That means I can help my other teammates around me as well with the way the position is going. I try to relate to what I feel works for me.”
So enamoured with Yeo’s all-energy game - “I try not to show it as much, but there is a fair few conversations going on in my head when I’m tired” - Fittler has named his salvia plants after the NRL’s most dependable player. He calls them his “Isaahs”.
“They’re just machines,” Fittler says, “They just grow out of control, flowering non-stop. I found it easier if I named the plants, I would be able to remember them.”
And if he had plants with the personality of Josh Addo-Carr?
“We’d sell them,” Fittler laughs.

But it’s exactly why Yeo is so valuable to not only Penrith, but the Blues.

While Jarome Luai, Stephen Crichton and Brian To’o carry boomboxes into the club’s academy and play pick-up basketball games, and Addo-Carr is the life of every State of Origin camp, Yeo can be found reading books on successful sporting dynasties. Cleary jokingly refers to him as “grandpa”.
He’s studied Tom Brady’s New England Patriots success (Yeo and Cleary emulated Brady and Rob Gronkowski’s viral “Bad Boys For Life” video after their NRL title), and the All Blacks’ rugby union dominance.
Rugby league’s most successful dynasty, the Dragons’ 11 straight premierships in the 1950s and 1960s, had Provan steering the ship. The most number of games Provan won in any 50-game stretch during that period was 47, according to stats guru David Middleton. Before last week’s loss to Parramatta, the Panthers had won 48 of their last 50 games in which Yeo played.

It was the greatest winning run of any player in rugby league history.
And it might just make him the most important player to his team

I missed this post and linked the article in another three threads on the site (one by accident).

Sorry not sorry.
 

The_Frog

First Grade
Messages
6,390
I missed this post and linked the article in another three threads on the site (one by accident).

Sorry not sorry.
I had a look around all the likely places before putting it up. Maybe we need a thread just for news articles.
 

The_Frog

First Grade
Messages
6,390
I'd be astounded if Bellamy moved Munster to fullback for a game of such little consequence. Meaney is an experienced fullback. He would have been signed to replace Hynes. Not using him only damages his confidence.
 
Top