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Sack Adam O'Brien

H

HarVeeGee

Juniors
Messages
280
When you’re naturally as good as Joey it’s actually really hard to articulate what you’re doing to people who don’t have it like you do.

I’ve heard his teammates attest to Joey giving the on field direction, “okay three tackles from now, pop up in this area and be ready” and sure enough three tackles later they’re catching a cut out pass with clean air in front of them, or they’re catching a banana kick and falling over the line. He didn’t only think ahead, he was pre-envisioning how the defence would react to what he was doing, and predicting correctly. It’s not even stuff they worked on during the week. It’s all stuff he felt would work as the game went on based on things he noticed on the field.

I always think of Joey’s rant at the end of that Origin game where Thurston buggered his arm and then somehow our halves barely managed to force him to make a tackle for the entire rest of the game. Just losing his mind that we “never targeted him”. But if you watch the game back the ball goes that way plenty, and JT’s back rower covers for him and I think ends up making over 50 tackles. They did target him. They just couldn’t do it effectively.

But Joey’s understanding of this game is on this instinctual level where there isn’t a difference between not doing something effectively and not doing it at all. The stuff you do on play 1 and play 2 to then be able to get Thurston into a 1-on-1 with your back rower and a centre, that just happened for him without him having to cognitively process those steps. Pure feel.

Similarly, I think there’s a reason both Cam Smith and Darren Lockyer seem to show literal interest in coaching. They know it’s not for them. A recipe for frustration that you can’t just tell the guy who plays the position you did to do the really subtle and difficult stuff which always came easy to you.
 
Knight Tales

Knight Tales

Bench
Messages
3,146
Going from a now experienced coach to a rookie is such a Newy move. No idea why but I am really barracking for AOB to shove it up their arse sidewards. There is fair criticism and then there is just straight up vendetta. I suspect it is now the latter from powers associated with the club.
 
perverse

perverse

Referee
Messages
26,978
Yep. It was very familiar AOB-ball tonight. His failures as a coach were unfortunately all on display. There's a lot of things I'll say he does well now, but our brand of football under him has been terrible. I reckon he's probably one of the best assistant coaches you could have on staff.

Can't pick Cogger after tonight. It's impossible. You drop him to Cup and lose his phone number after our start to the year.
 
Apey

Apey

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
28,535
Hastings is absolutely cooked but I'd give him the 7 until the end of the year just because he can occasionally produce a try from a kick and doesn't get tackled with the ball so often.
 
perverse

perverse

Referee
Messages
26,978
Apey said:
Hastings is absolutely cooked but I'd give him the 7 until the end of the year just because he can occasionally produce a try from a kick and doesn't get tackled with the ball so often.
Click to expand...
I completely forgot about him, but he can't be worse than Cogger. Even Hastings with a grudge and the poo poos is better than the Cogger trainwreck.
 
mozza91

mozza91

Coach
Messages
14,725
Apey said:
Hastings is absolutely cooked but I'd give him the 7 until the end of the year just because he can occasionally produce a try from a kick and doesn't get tackled with the ball so often.
Click to expand...
Cup were fun to watch today. Threw the ball around a fair bit and some decent 2nd phase. Hastings, Sutton, Gamble on 1 leg, Lieutenant Dan on no legs are all better options then Cogger at this stage.

Would seriously consider Arthur aswell. Crossland is too vanilla and Brailey is leaving so we might as well give him some game time.
 
Woody90

Woody90

Bench
Messages
2,784
perverse said:
Far from the chief offender, I just can't stand our boring-ass, pedestrian approach to the game. It's always amplified 10 fold when a few things go wrong.
Click to expand...

Tbh I think our attack looks pedestrian because it dies at first receiver with Cogger (if someone else hasn’t dropped it yet). I know very different opposition, but in the first 2 games Ponga was jumping into first receiver the most and we were all talking about how much better our attack looks this year.

Also we need to out it into perspective: at the end of the day that game was just completely f**ked. We lost 2 players by the second minute, ended up with a 1 man bench by the end, Crossland got binned…to be honest I thought we defended phenomenally all things considered. A side does not defend like that if it doesn’t have heart.

The club isn’t going punt AOB until better halves come in, and tbh I don’t think I would either as I don’t think any coach could do much better with our halves. People can say whatever they want about Brown but he doesn’t kill attack like Cogger.
 
Woody90

Woody90

Bench
Messages
2,784
mozza91 said:
Cup were fun to watch today. Threw the ball around a fair bit and some decent 2nd phase. Hastings, Sutton, Gamble on 1 leg, Lieutenant Dan on no legs are all better options then Cogger at this stage.

Would seriously consider Arthur aswell. Crossland is too vanilla and Brailey is leaving so we might as well give him some game time.
Click to expand...

Gamble played Cup today??? I thought he was still injured? Did he pull up ok?
 
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