Season 2024 in Review

[Big Marn]

Wasnt Nigel Vagana involved in some sort of player welfare scheme for awhile? Used to go club to club helping out new players. Not sure what sort of help he provided though.

 

[Penrose Warrior]

WTF Stacey...

That's pretty hard to take as a fan.

Don't know if Webster will love Stacey saying that, nor saying that chopping and changing pretty well f**ked our season

 

[Thatwasnthighref]

WTF Stacey...

That's pretty hard to take as a fan.

Don't know if Webster will love Stacey saying that, nor saying that chopping and changing pretty well f**ked our season

What don’t you like about it?

 

[Penrose Warrior]

What don’t you like about it?

The part about players having problems away from the field and not being in the right head space.

I don't mind the game plan being off, Webster getting caught short as a new coach, injuries, all that stuff.

But it's f**king hard to take if Stacey blurts something like that (without any depth) and we are to believe that these guys were unprofessional this year. If it was AFB, he should've been moved on. If it wasn't, who was it? Are these people still at the club? Why did this happen? One good year, and things go tits up?

 

[Thatwasnthighref]

The part about players having problems away from the field and not being in the right head space.

I don't mind the game plan being off, Webster getting caught short as a new coach, injuries, all that stuff.

But it's f**king hard to take if Stacey blurts something like that (without any depth) and we are to believe that these guys were unprofessional this year. If it was AFB, he should've been moved on. If it wasn't, who was it? Are these people still at the club? Why did this happen? One good year, and things go tits up?

Yea fair enough. But TBH I’m less surprised about the news itself as I am about someone actually admitting it.

Bunch of 20-something y/o males with a lot of money and lots of attention.. I imagine nearly every club, at any given time, has a handful of players whose heads aren’t in the right place. They just rarely admit to it unless there’s an incident.

 

[Penrose Warrior]

Yea fair enough. But TBH I’m less surprised about the news itself as I am about someone actually admitting it.

Bunch of 20-something y/o males with a lot of money and lots of attention.. I imagine nearly every club, at any given time, has a handful of players whose heads aren’t in the right place. They just rarely admit to it unless there’s an incident.

Oh no I agree. I'm not surprised, it does f**k me off but...actually no, it does surprise me. No it doesn't surprise me in the sense that I've followed the NRL for a long time, teams have issues and they're humans, shit happens. But with our team, the main issue we felt - and some still do - was around AFB. But he played the house down from mid-season. So who are these issues around? Can anyone hazard a guess who it might be, that Stacey is talking about?

Stacey said a few things in that interview that I would never expect a professional to say, I now have a really good idea why I've never thought he'd be head material. Saying that, was poor. You don't kick fans in the teeth when you're down and it does your club no favours to say some people weren't in the right headspace.

 

[Thatwasnthighref]

Oh no I agree. I'm not surprised, it does f**k me off but...actually no, it does surprise me. No it doesn't surprise me in the sense that I've followed the NRL for a long time, teams have issues and they're humans, shit happens. But with our team, the main issue we felt - and some still do - was around AFB. But he played the house down from mid-season. So who are these issues around? Can anyone hazard a guess who it might be, that Stacey is talking about?

Stacey said a few things in that interview that I would never expect a professional to say, I now have a really good idea why I've never thought he'd be head material. Saying that, was poor. You don't kick fans in the teeth when you're down and it does your club no favours to say some people weren't in the right headspace.

Honestly no idea who else other than AFB that could've been the source of any off field dramas.

But re: his performances - I had a closer look at his stats at the end of the regular season and interestingly, his per game numbers for total runs, metres gained and post contact metres were all better in '24, but his average tackles per game was lower.

I know you can interpret stats in lots of different ways, but I found it interesting that while he was even better on the headline stuff for front rowers, in a key effort area like defence, his contribution dropped.