Yeah, Ryles, Angus and the Sua’alii situation haven’t helped you at all this year. Sua’alii really lost form when the signing was announced, understandable he is only a young bloke. You also suffered the same as we did with the World Cup players all looking tired. Manu, Teddy, Cleary, Luai all looked buggered at the start of the year. We had eight players in the final and the bragging rights are good, but all it meant is we started the year flat and listless and some of those players got injuries.
As for Teddy, Wayne Bennett says “better a year too early than a year too late” when it comes to moving players. Who am I to argue with that?
Spencer will be great for you. He won’t be intimidated by anybody and will be your enforcer when big, bad JWH hangs up his knuckle dusters. I am upset we couldn’t keep him.
If you get the Dom Young from the World Cup, he will be great for you and a better winger than Sua’alii. It’s hard to gauge his ceiling playing at the Knights.
I am nostalgic and I would love to be able to keep club legends to finish their career here, but the salary cap doesn’t allow it. At some point, Yeo, Cleary et al will need to be tapped on the shoulder. If you don’t make those tough decisions, you will slide into mediocrity especially if your whole strategy is built around development. Clog up the pathways with veterans and all the good young players will leave.
I can see that discipline is an issue for you. Robbo has to stop blaming refs, it is the wrong message to the players. The refs will ref. Focus on your own game. Ivan, who sounds illiterate next to the erudite Robbo, made a comment last week which highlights what I mean. The journalist said “the NAS try didn’t look a try from any angle, what do you think?”. Ivan replied “probably, but it didn’t matter they deserved to score at that point. They were dominating us”. Robbo would have gone off on one in two languages, explaining how it changed the balance of the game and caused butterflies in the Amazon to become extinct….
