Sack the whole team thread

[HarVeeGee]

I’m actually not sure the player trade for Klem was part of the potential Brooks deal. The sticking point in that one was how much of Luke’s contract we’d be willing to pay. I’ve heard that everything had already been arranged besides that & Luke was telling people he was off to Newy in the off season.

How would it have gone? Probably not great, but also not as bad as people imagine. A bit like him at Manly.

Certainly not upset to have Brown + Sharpe and not him next year.

 

[Woody90]

Ended up swapping a prop we were trusting to carry a huge workload with the biggest pelican in the sport.

I think we need to remember though that we were having huge issues with Klemmer at the time. He was setting a terrible example, having it out with trainers, etc. From what I remember of the time, our desperation to get Hastings was less about being desperate to get Hastings and more desperate to get Klemmer out.

On the other hand though Tigers were desperate to get Hastings out for the same kind of reasons. Both clubs were so keen to get the bad seeds out they failed to realise they were also picking up another likely bad seed. At least we got 1 good year out of Hastings I guess.

 

[ryan.a87]

From memory, we were in desperate need of a half back (that should be our tagline) and we had two front rowers on 800k…..

and I also vaguely remember Klemmer doing a lot of things that padded his stats, but didn’t help the team……like instead of hitting the line and getting a kick play the ball, he’d hit the line and drag the two defenders a couple of meters to increase his “post contact metres” but give the defence much more time to set

 

[HarVeeGee]

Oh yeah I don’t actually think it’s bad Klem left. Would have been right to move him on either way.

 

[Woody90]

Bump (for the backs at least).

 

[alexwilliams_66692007]

We deadset need a sports psychologist or something... We have the weakest mental midgets at this club and it has been like that since the Pearce era.

 

[Woody90]

Every year we seem to have a new problem. I don’t recall us ever having this problem with making an insane amount of errors before, and now we suddenly are with virtually the same squad.

We’re truely amazing. Should be studied.

 

[perverse]

We deadset need a sports psychologist or something... We have the weakest mental midgets at this club and it has been like that since the Pearce era.

Pearce was the leadership dam that was holding back the tidal wave of this bullshit. No-one wanted to hear it at the time, but it's as true now as it was then.

He was our last real leader of men. Flawed, but that's what he was to us.

 

[aqua_duck]

Every year we seem to have a new problem. I don’t recall us ever having this problem with making an insane amount of errors before, and now we suddenly are with virtually the same squad.

We’re truely amazing. Should be studied.

Yep, and what’s worse is we’re not even making errors from playing expansive football or offloads, etc. 90% of our errors are unforced, no attention to detail whatsoever

 

[The Axe of Druss]

So after last week's games I said I took no confidence out of beating Souths reserve grade team and I was pizzled for being too negative and even accused of not being a real fan

Funny what happened last night ay

 

[Yosh]

We drop the ball less when we play more expansive. The first half Crossland was passing 2-3 players wider of the ruck and our go forward was really good. Then suddenly we go back to passing one out again. I don't get it

 

[aqua_duck]

We drop the ball less when we play more expansive. The first half Crossland was passing 2-3 players wider of the ruck and our go forward was really good. Then suddenly we go back to passing one out again. I don't get it

Hard to get much go forward when you’re dropping the ball in your own half

 

[HarVeeGee]

The dropped ball is a result of playing this tentative, conservative style which allows defenders to gang tackle, to hit with venom, to manhandle after the initial contact. And even without the errors, we’ve had possession go against us heaps in games. If it keeps happening it’s not just bad luck or a bad trot: we are doing something wrong.

AOB is fond of saying footy is a “simple game, just hold the ball and good things will happen”. But you can’t just “hold the ball”. It’s unrealistic. The least error prone side in the NRL averages 8 errors per game at the moment. You will drop the ball. Momentum will swing the other way (often just from arbitrary reffing). What are you as a team going to do to get the momentum back?

Footy is a simple game, but it’s not “errors = bad, low errors = good”. It’s a game of applying more pressure to the other side than they’re applying to you. Doing positive things on your side to turn momentum your way, to force errors from the OTHER side.

We did not just start dropping the ball out of nowhere for no reason. We started dropping it because even after 30 minutes of 70% possession for us, the Titans ran harder and straighter, had better line speed, and tackled harder. That’s all.

The god damned Titans.

 

[Yosh]

The dropped ball is a result of playing this tentative, conservative style which allows defenders to gang tackle, to hit with venom, to manhandle after the initial contact. And even without the errors, we’ve had possession go against us heaps in games. If it keeps happening it’s not just bad luck or a bad trot: we are doing something wrong.

AOB is fond of saying footy is a “simple game, just hold the ball and good things will happen”. But you can’t just “hold the ball”. It’s unrealistic. The least error prone side in the NRL averages 8 errors per game at the moment. You will drop the ball. Momentum will swing the other way (often just from arbitrary reffing). What are you as a team going to do to get the momentum back?

Footy is a simple game, but it’s not “errors = bad, low errors = good”. It’s a game of applying more pressure to the other side than they’re applying to you. Doing positive things on your side to turn momentum your way, to force errors from the OTHER side.

We did not just start dropping the ball out of nowhere for no reason. We started dropping it because even after 30 minutes of 70% possession for us, the Titans ran harder and straighter, had better line speed, and tackled harder. That’s all.

The god damned Titans.

Been saying this for ages. We also need a bigger kicker than Cogger if we are going to play our style. We kick from our 40m let's say, Cogger's kicks are so short and shallow, the opposition bring the ball back to their 20m or 30m easily (even with our to be honest fantastic chase), their forwards don't need to get back that far for them, they make 40 to 50m easily, kick high and pressure Marzhew and we start the set two tackles down in our 10m zone. That's how half the game goes. Cogger might have played okay next to Cleary (who was doing everything and just needed the ball one wider) but Sharpe/Cogger just isn't working. Cogger (at best) is a second fiddle half, who needs a dominant competent half next to him.

AOB ball is from 20 years ago. The rules have changed. The NRL has changed. It's not about slowing down the play the ball and trying to bore the opposition to death. It's about athleticism and flair and dominating the opponent. I think we have the players to achieve this to a degree but the style of play doesn't suit the players. Brown is another great example. He is going to die a slow death playing AOB ball.

 

[HarVeeGee]

Yep and added to that there’s seemingly arbitrary six agains and penalties being doled out which upset whatever “game cycle” you’re trying to get into.

Penrith and now Canterbury are outliers in terms of dominating most of the game. The other good teams have mostly just been better at scoring points more consistently and efficiently when things are going their way, and holding on when they’re not. Including when we were good in 2023. The indicators where we were exceptionally good relative to other teams were things like play the balls in the opposing 20 per try scored. I think we were actually a somewhat net negative team in yardage etc.

Where did that go? It’s been sacrificed on the altar of trying to turn this team into something it isn’t.

 

[aqua_duck]

Been saying this for ages. We also need a bigger kicker than Cogger if we are going to play our style. We kick from our 40m let's say, Cogger's kicks are so short and shallow, the opposition bring the ball back to their 20m or 30m easily (even with our to be honest fantastic chase), their forwards don't need to get back that far for them, they make 40 to 50m easily, kick high and pressure Marzhew and we start the set two tackles down in our 10m zone. That's how half the game goes. Cogger might have played okay next to Cleary (who was doing everything and just needed the ball one wider) but Sharpe/Cogger just isn't working. Cogger (at best) is a second fiddle half, who needs a dominant competent half next to him.

AOB ball is from 20 years ago. The rules have changed. The NRL has changed. It's not about slowing down the play the ball and trying to bore the opposition to death. It's about athleticism and flair and dominating the opponent. I think we have the players to achieve this to a degree but the style of play doesn't suit the players. Brown is another great example. He is going to die a slow death playing AOB ball.

Agreed, we also don’t have the cattle or mentality to succeed with the AOB game plan. The thing that I don’t understand about the AOB game plan or philosophy is sure we want to play ‘safe’ footy but that needs to be built on effort and competiting for everything which we simply do not do and in fact are coached not to do case in point high kicks.
Maybe if we had Adam Reynolds kicking game and good bench front rowers we could strangle teams for 80 minutes but we simply do not have that

 

[Apey]

This is bleeding into the Sack AOB thread a bit but I don't really understand people on this forum saying we're going to be playing a different style next year due to not having a typical halfback and more ball running/attacking flair with Brown and Sharpe. Have you not watched us in the last 5 odd years? Where are you getting this fantasy from? It's not happening with AOB ball. This idea is in direct conflict with how we play.

If AOB isn't gone this year (unlikely), our game in 2026 is going to be damn interesting because Brown might be the least AOB ball halfback in the entire competition.

 

[HarVeeGee]

He likes the theory of throwing dynamic players out there and having them score at will, but he hasn’t shown he understands how to consistently get that actually happening.

Aside from 2023 with Hastings, we’re usually a really bad team at picking when to transition from getting on the front foot to capitalising on that front foot ball. Lots of extra hit ups when we should be moving the ball and moving the ball when we should be being patient.

 

[Mr_Knightside]

We’re just a really low footy IQ team unfortunately. It’s like we can’t read the game at all and when the momentum swings against us we either have no way of identifying how to change it or we’re not good enough to do it.