Also Ricky Stuart is a dick. Stop coaching in such an ill disciplined way and you wont get such poor penalty counts against you. Darcy Lussick must be one of the worst buys of the season as well, just gives away penalty after penalty with stupid play. Agression still has to be disciplined if you want to get anywhere in the game - look at how Souths and Easts are playing at present.
Can't agree with that at all. We get penalised out of games when we're doing nothing different to the opposition. No one is saying the penalties aren't deserved, just that it seems the referees are much happier to penalise the side coming last than the side coming first. Souths were holding down longer than we were in the ruck yesterday but we lost the count. Maybe we need a wrestling coach after all, maybe it's the subtlety that something like that brings to slowing down the ruck that we lack. Also Lussick had given away less penalties than Mannah last I looked, he's been solid. Probably needs to stop shoulder charging blokes or tackling them by the face but just because he gives away a couple of memorable penalties doesn't mean his discipline is any worse than anyone else in the side. Ben Smith, Reni Maitua and Jarryd Hayne have given away a lot more penalties for eg.
I also don't necessarily agree with people saying our squad is totally rubbish. It's certainly got a lot of rubbish in it, but there's still a lot of decent players and better in there and we've got some good signings so far for next year. The major problem is what we lack, not the overall squad quality. Hayne is obvious, as is Mannah. Both rep quality players. Sandow has a lot of baggers but it's a little unfair IMO. He's playing behind an atrocious backrow without a five-eighth or hooker to speak of in the side. He's not in the top tier of halfbacks but I for one hope we do keep him. We've seen what he can do in a good side, and it's too much to ask even the best halfback to drag a poor side around the field alone.
I think our three major problems this season are youth/inexperience, some shit holding us back and mostly a lack of decent players in important positions. We don't have a 6 or a 9. Joseph Paulo is useless at every position bar maybe impact off the bench, and Matt Keating has the second or third slowest service in the game. But I do think we're going the right way and will improve markedly next year. Really good young guys like Jacob Loko, Kelepi Tanginoa, Peni Terepo will have had this season under their belts, and I think Ricky is managing the young guys quite well and not exposing them to too much first grade and burning them out. Lesson learned from Cronulla I hope. We've got Hopoate, Norman, Hock and Mossop coming over in important positions for us. Personally I'm not sold on Hock because he's a thug, but he does make an impact. We've got a pretty good crop of juniors coming through as well in kids like Kaysa Pritchard, Vai Toutai, Pauli Pauli, Junior Paulo, Frazer Masinimua, Brayden Williame, Kenny Edwards and a few others. And most importantly Sticky is finally doing the sort of clean out Anderson tried to start. We're not automatically going to be minor premiers again, but we're moving in the right direction more than the Tigers and Dragons IMO anyway. This rough line up certainly isn't awful, although we need to sign a hooker....
1-Hayne 2-Sio 3-Morgan 4-Hopate 5-Loko 6-Norman 7-Sandow 8-Mannah 9-???? 10-Allgood 11-Mossop 12-Tanginoa 13-Hock -Bench-Pritchard Lussick Moi Moi Terepo
