Trial Game Newcastle Knights vs Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks

[Rod]

Hard to tell because the Sharks looked reasonably ploddy but a couple of general things stood out to me:

- As others have said, looks like we finally have some depth in most positions. We've managed to upgrade the squad without making any splashy signings (unless you count the English boys), which isn't always easy when you have a bit of success.
- We looked physically strong and fit. Even the smaller blokes looked wirey and like they could hold their own in first grade. Somewhat ironically we still lack one more big prop, perhaps Cartwright could play some mins there? He looked big on the weekend.

All in all a good first hit out and the amount of depth should create some competition for spots, something that we struggled with for a long time.

 

[Unicorn]

Are we all ready for another season of this?

I live in hope that we don't.

 

[Old dog]

Lot of talk about very ordinary sharks meaning our win was not so good, are we forgetting we played without Ponga, Best, Gagai, Elliot, Brailey, Thompson and Frizell all auto selections so we had a few players that weren’t 1st graders, we did good

 

[Woody90]

Lot of talk about very ordinary sharks meaning our win was not so good, are we forgetting we played without Ponga, Best, Gagai, Elliot, Brailey, Thompson and Frizell all auto selections so we had a few players that weren’t 1st graders, we did good

Watching the replay I thought our attack was very clunky and errors didn’t help so I can see why AOB wasn’t overly happy with the performance. In saying that though, we throw the ball around a lot so it’s natural things aren’t going to click in the first game of the year with so many usuals out. If you look purely at our stats we were still one of the better performing teams in the trials and hit all our attack KPIs so to speak without looking super crisp. I don’t put any stock into trial performances but I was very happy with our commitment, fitness and depth.