Sack the whole team thread

[HarVeeGee]

That sort of impact in a bad team with poor attack is startling. Put him on the Storm and he might be scoring a try per game.

 

[slotmachine]

Interesting to see KP not even in the top 10 fullbacks.

 

[HarVeeGee]

Almost like he's been playing bad.

 

[slotmachine]

Almost like he's not having a go. Bet he does for QLD though.

 

[Apey]

I've made it a bit of a point to watch Ponga, especially when I'm at the game and don't have to rely on cameras, and he's definitely been having a go the last few weeks. The first half of the Tigers game was absolutely rock bottom from him - he actively avoided the ball. Not saying he's anywhere near where he needs to be now but its very obvious he's getting his hands on the ball more and has been more involved with plays. Hasn't really been coming off though.

 

[perverse]

Interesting to see KP not even in the top 10 fullbacks.

This year? Yep, absolutely true. I think this is the worst form we've seen KP in since he got here tbh. Team not helping, but it's weird seeing him be so dramatically ineffective.

 

[Woody90]

Bump

 

[alexwilliams_66692007]

We're actually playing worse than the 2016 squad did. Except these morons actually take up more than double the cap space

#BringBackCoryDenniss

 

[HarVeeGee]

Kalyn had a dig. It's weird how bad he is in broken play though, for such a heralded player. He's always been kind of bad at it and only gets worse. Running in Sharpe's way there was so weird.

It's like he can't play "with" or "off" guys - you play to him or play off him, but he doesn't play off you. That's a weird thing to be bad at this late into his career.

 

[macavity]

Really sobering to think a lot of our issue is an absolutely woeful prop rotation, and if we had just kept our juniors our prop rotation could reasonably be:

Saifiti x 2
Josh King
Max King

we really do know how to f**k up.

 

[The Axe of Druss]

Jeezus we are really good at the old rose coloured glasses view around here aren't we

 

[alexwilliams_66692007]

Jeezus we are really good at the old rose coloured glasses view around here aren't we

It's funny isn't it? I remember a time (pretty much the entire time he played for us) when most Knights fans never wanted to see Josh King in a first grade jersey ever again...

 

[macavity]

It's funny isn't it? I remember a time (pretty much the entire time he played for us) when most Knights fans never wanted to see Josh King in a first grade jersey ever again...

I was filthy we lost him.

 

[mozza91]

King started to come good in his last year here. Was a total plodder at the start of his career.

 

[slotmachine]

I was filthy we lost him.

Based on what? His last 4 years here he averaged 42/51/58/67 metres per game.

Was 25 when he left and didn't look to be getting better, his profile was basically a worse brodie jones at the same age. Would you be filthy if Jones had have left 2 years ago?

Suggesting anything other than 99.9% of knights fans were fine with his leaving is revisionist history.

 

[SamSepi0l]

I can't pretend he was banging down the door as a must re-sign but he took a leap performance wise in his final year that made it clear this out come was *possible* not guaranteed or anything. Didn't think much of it when he was leaving.

 

[Woody90]

The only Knights player I ever was or still bummed we lost was Tapine.

Barnett definitely would have been nice now too but for whatever reason he obviously needed a change of environments so we probably wouldn’t have gotten the NZ Barney anyway.

The rest meh, none of them would have made a meaningful difference if they’d been here and I never look at them and think damn I wish we’d kept them.

 

[slotmachine]

I can't pretend he was banging down the door as a must re-sign but he took a leap performance wise in his final year that made it clear this out come was *possible* not guaranteed or anything. Didn't think much of it when he was leaving.

If you kept every local plodder forward who was averaging under 70m a game at age 25 because they showed a slight uptick in production you would have a very very ordinary squad.

In fact Macca complains about exactly this type of player (quite rightly), but then is unhappy when one of them leaves and is going OK (and let's be clear, King is just going OK) in a much much better system?

 

[HarVeeGee]

Yeah Tapine is still the worst loss. On the flip side, he took a while to come good at Canberra, and was always a middling back rower at best. The big leap came as a lock/prop. My understanding is that us losing him was simply due to Canberra paying him more, but had we paid what it took to keep him the ROI initially (paging Dr Dr) would have been quite poor. No one is saying this shit is easy.

Also part of why these losses turn out to be gutting is that there’s now a bit of a trend of these forwards who were okay to good for us going on to be good to great elsewhere, and not a lot of examples of this happening in reverse.

Is this just a coincidence, or do these players need to leave to fulfil their potential?

If so. Why?

Of course none of us were crying about Josh King leaving at the time. But also, we’re not the ones close enough to the situation to really know whether or not we SHOULD keep him. King going to Melbourne for example was just a personal recommendation to Bellyache from Tim Glasby: Basically a “you’ll love this kid, he trains so hard, he has a lot more to give.” So it was obvious he was a keeper to a guy who worked with him every day, just not to people still affiliated with the Knights. Why?

 

[slotmachine]

The big leap came as a lock/prop.

And the start of the six again era. He played lock in 2019 and didn't look nearly as effective as he did in 2020. So yeah, fair bit of luck involved too.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if King stayed he'd look just like Brodie Jones does at the moment ie. someone on the fringe of first grade and not in the 17 of a serious side. But if you sent Jones to the Storm he's probably another one that got away people are not happy about.