We are hopelessly outgunned in the forwards right now - no coaching is going to fix that. AOB needs to hold some responsibility for that, but so does Parr, so does POS, so does Gardner. Our situation right now isn’t just on his shoulders.
Sometimes you play a team with a much better pack, they're really "on", and they just grind you out of the contest. That's Origin right now. The Blues have a huge athleticism advantage and they are ruthless and dominant. They don't let you in the contest. Fine.
We've played the Warriors, who ground us down, and the Dogs, who did the same (plus the horrible injuries in that game, rotten luck). It happens. Really good sides that defend really well can shut you out. If those were the only game where it happened, people wouldn't be so harsh.
6 vs Titans, 4 vs Tigers, 6 vs Parramatta, 14 vs Cronulla, 6 vs Dragons, all but two of those tries being in garbage time when the other side had clocked off. These aren't sides that are defending well, that don't ever let you get on the front foot, that don't give you stuff you can attack. These are teams that are really struggling to prevent sides from scoring right now. It's almost half our games.
In 40% of halves this season, we haven't scored a try. Of the 28 tries we've scored, 7, or a quarter, are garbage time tries when the other team has switched off, so really we've scored 21. The next worst attacking team has 36.
THIS is why people are losing their minds. The stuff with the forwards explains some issues and it explains why it's not a winning team. It does not explain how impotent the attack is on its own. It doesn't explain why AOB teams very often have very long periods in seasons where the attack is just horrible and there is no perceptible improvement week on week.
The 2025 Knights are one of the worst attacking teams of the NRL era. Other teams have had way worse packs, way worse injury crises, and not been this bad in attack. Under this coach our attack has ranked: 8th, 14th, 13th, 1st (in a season where AOB was essentially working part time), 15th, and now stone motherless last. 4 out of 5 completed seasons with finals appearances, with 2 out of those four appearances being with an attack barely better than truly dreadful sides like the Broncos wooden spooners. You can't win enough games to make finals if the pack is getting dominated, so it doesn't explain the poor attack that season, either.
Remember those 2020/21 Bulldogs who had diabolical rosters, and just could not score in a brothel? Our attack, right now, is worse than those teams.
"Outgunned in the forwards" actually doesn't explain it. The attack has been shit more than it hasn't irrespective of personnel in the pack, under this coach. Blame who you like, but something is going wrong in terms of what's being drilled into this team. Simple as that.
