Round 16: Newcastle Knights vs Canterbury Bulldogs

What is your prediction for this game ??

  • Knights 13+

    Votes: 16 57.1%

  • Knights 1-12

    Votes: 10 35.7%

  • Draw

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Bulldogs 1-12

    Votes: 2 7.1%

  • Bulldogs 13+

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    28
  • Poll closed .
Billy said:
It's hard to say because we've never seen him get injured before.
The way he reacted seemed to say it's very minor, but some guys get major injuries and don't make a big deal of them, like Jacob Saifiti basically had a shattered shoulder and reacted like it was a bit of an ouchie.
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Ponga was rubbing the mamstring a couple of minutes earlier than when he went down.
 
Really disappointed in some posts made in this thread with people attacking each other and being abusive

By all means criticize the team and player performances, That's your right after all

What we won't tolerate is the personal attacks and abuse

It stops here
 
Few positives out of last nights game for me

Of course the result was gutting and overall it wasn't great but I try to find positives :)

- Completion rate of 88%, We have done well in this area all year and have the best completion rate of all teams
- 4 line breaks which was equal with the Doggies (We are 3rd in the NRL for Line breaks)
- Average set distance of 41.7m which is pretty good
- Got some second phase happening with 10 offloads (Equal with the Dogs)
- Tackle Efficiency of 89.9%
- Conceded just the 6 penalties
- Herman Ese'ese was huge again (158m, 1 line break, 5 tackle breaks, 41 tackles, 1 try and 0 errors)
- Connor Watson had his best performance for us (162m, 3 line breaks, 9 tackle breaks, 0 errors, 2 tries)
- I thought Cogger tried hard (92m, 1 line break assist, 1 try assist, 17 tackles with just 1 miss, 279 kick metres and 1 forced dropout)
- Mitch Barnett ran hard and pulled off a couple of good shots (122m of which 53m was post contact, 4 offloads, 25 tackles)
- Aidan Guerra was great, Especially in defence (110m of which 46m was post contact, 51 tackles with just 3 misses)
- Sione had an ok game I thought (110m of which 54m was post contact, 10 tackles with just 1 miss)
- Slade Griffin was great before getting injured (1 try assist, 1 line break assist, 20 tackles with 0 misses, 1 offload)
- Defensively Levi (25 tackles, 0 misses), Buhrer (22 tackles and 0 misses), King (26 tackles 2 misses), Sam Stone (31 tackles 2 misses) were all solid
 
Connor Watson had easily his best game for us..... at fullback...… which is his best position.

Sam Stone had his best game yet and looked capable of playing firstgrade now. They moved him away from Josh Jackson to try to strengthen that side of the field, but Mitch Barnett didn't do much better.
 
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daniels said:
I didn't understand how we were considered favorites, yeah dogs have lost a few players and they have a few young players move into their squad, but we have a heap of young players in ours some of which are not really NRL level players.

The dogs forward pack is much better than ours and they have a more experienced backline. The one thing we had as an advantage is the Ponga factor and unfortunately that ended early.

What's the thinking behind Pongas injury? Is it long term, he did seem to be walking afterwards.
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Crazy if you don't think we should have been favourites for that game. The Dogs are in all sorts this year, been horrible all year, lost 2 of their highest paid players mid-season just to try & somewhat ease their salary cap for coming years & had 2 debutants playing yesterday. As bad as we've been at times this year, we've been much better than them & have good attacking players on our side like Ponga & Watson to take advantage of low confidence sides. We should have won that comfortably & while the injuries did not help at all, it's still a very tough pill to swallow.
 
Back in the 90's when A. Johns was injured we would struggle to win a game without him. Pearce is just as important to our squad now as Johns was then.

It's no surprise we have struggled. Unfortunately we lost our next best attacking weapon last night early in the game, and Griffin after that.

No surprise at all we lost.

Normal transmission should resume to some extent against Parra with Pearce returning. Watson can cover fullback while Ponga is out if need be, Lamb can come in to cover 5/8 and Levi is still a good hooker, with Buhrer interchanging with him there.

We will keep getting better, probably won't make the 8 but then again, not many of us thought we would at the beginning of the year and we are on track to finish around where most thought we would. Next year with a few more additions (and hopefully some luck on injuries), we should improve again.
 
Can only see knights winning maybe 3 more games, cowboys, eels and titans and maybe tigers. Should be enough to avoid the spoon. Very unlucky with injuries this year but even still we have improved soo much over last year.
However I think if we play the same style/results next year the coach will be tapped on the shoulder.
 
I would not be too harsh on them for last night their is not a team in the Comp who could have their first choice halfback out and than in a game lose their hooker and fullback and manage to come away with the win. The team tried their guts out last night completed their sets and worked hard in defence despite a few lapses but without Pearce, Ponga and Griffin we lacked the composure to get the ball across the line in the attacking 20. For us to come into spoon contention the Eels would have to win three more games than us out of their next 9 and I can’t see that happening with us getting Pearce and a few others back for the Eels game.
 
Imo There's no way we should have been favourite;s , we have 2 first grade standard props in Ese,ese and Lillyman and for most of the game 1 on the field at any time and its not like Lillyman is a world beater.
King a fringe 1st grader as is Stone , and Denniss , We had already lost our no1 winger in Ross , our better centre in Moga our best player and playmaker in Pearce and both our twin towers in the Saifiti's and that's all before losing our 2 best players we had left in Griffin and Ponga and then having a 2nd rower at 5/8 and Levi at dummy half who imo is a step down from Griffin and leaving us with 15 men .
We still won the first half but they blew us away for the first 10 in the second half and the last 5 we were just too tired to keep competeing .
To be honest im not nearly as upset as a lot of people on here though I cant wait for Pearce to get back because Cogger is playing 1st grade way before he is ready …
You cant win games when you have 1 first grade standard Prop on the field for most of the game its just not going to happen.
 
Quinny said:
I would not be too harsh on them for last night their is not a team in the Comp who could have their first choice halfback out and than in a game lose their hooker and fullback and manage to come away with the win.
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Not to mention missing a few props from a team already below strength compared to most established NRL rosters. Rebuilding remember.

We are going ok.
 
We'll still be rebuilding in 2020 and our defence might be sorted in 2025 at the rate we're going.

I've finally worked out when it will be the knights year, its always next year.
 
Kurriboy said:
Not to mention missing a few props from a team already below strength compared to most established NRL rosters. Rebuilding remember.

We are going ok.
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Yea we are low on troops last night we were missing Pearce, Saifiti x 2, Fitzgibbon, Moga and Ross plus than the players we lost during the game. I don’t think we are as far off as some people think it’s taken 15 rounds till our finals hopes have finally been extinguished baring a miracle despite the fact our first choice spine will have played just 4 or so games together for the year.
 
rhugh89 said:
Few positives out of last nights game for me

Of course the result was gutting and overall it wasn't great but I try to find positives :)

- Completion rate of 88%, We have done well in this area all year and have the best completion rate of all teams
- 4 line breaks which was equal with the Doggies (We are 3rd in the NRL for Line breaks)
- Average set distance of 41.7m which is pretty good
- Got some second phase happening with 10 offloads (Equal with the Dogs)
- Tackle Efficiency of 89.9%
- Conceded just the 6 penalties
- Herman Ese'ese was huge again (158m, 1 line break, 5 tackle breaks, 41 tackles, 1 try and 0 errors)
- Connor Watson had his best performance for us (162m, 3 line breaks, 9 tackle breaks, 0 errors, 2 tries)
- I thought Cogger tried hard (92m, 1 line break assist, 1 try assist, 17 tackles with just 1 miss, 279 kick metres and 1 forced dropout)
- Mitch Barnett ran hard and pulled off a couple of good shots (122m of which 53m was post contact, 4 offloads, 25 tackles)
- Aidan Guerra was great, Especially in defence (110m of which 46m was post contact, 51 tackles with just 3 misses)
- Sione had an ok game I thought (110m of which 54m was post contact, 10 tackles with just 1 miss)
- Slade Griffin was great before getting injured (1 try assist, 1 line break assist, 20 tackles with 0 misses, 1 offload)
- Defensively Levi (25 tackles, 0 misses), Buhrer (22 tackles and 0 misses), King (26 tackles 2 misses), Sam Stone (31 tackles 2 misses) were all solid
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Glad you see it that way, looking at those stats you would think we had won lol

Just the effort was lacking in D, cogger is way out of his depth and we have too many injuries.

Brown said we want another 6 players, we need them before kickoff round 1 2019 otherwise another year of avaoiding the spoon
 
slotmachine said:
We'll still be rebuilding in 2020 and our defence might be sorted in 2025 at the rate we're going.

I've finally worked out when it will be the knights year, its always next year.
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What do you suggest we do?

Start another rebuild or try to buy a premiership next year?
 
You would say this is Slades career


The No.9 has suffered multiple ruptures to ligaments in his knee.

The injury to Griffin includes a ruptured ACL graft, ruptured lateral ligament and torn lateral meniscus.

He will undergo an ACL reconstruction in the coming weeks.

Griffin will undergo 9-12 months of rehab.

4th recon on same knee?

Ponga gone for a month


Maybe this team will be the one to play parra


1 Connor Watson
2 Ken Sio
3 Nathan Ross
4 Sione Mata'utia
5 Shaun Kenny-Dowall
6 Brock Lamb
7 Mitchell Pearce
8 Herman Ese'ese
9 Jamie Buhrer
10 Daniel Saifiti
11 Sam Stone
12 Mitch Barnett
13 Aiden Guerra


14 Dani Levi
15 JJ Felise
16 Jacob Lillyman
17 Chris Heighington
 
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