Round 8: Newcastle Knights vs Manly Sea Eagles

What is your prediction for this game ??

  • Knights 13+

    Votes: 6 31.6%
  • Knights 1-12

    Votes: 9 47.4%
  • Draw

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Sea Eagles 1-12

    Votes: 2 10.5%
  • Sea Eagles 13+

    Votes: 2 10.5%

  • Total voters
    19
  • Poll closed .
To be fair, we hardly have ever had a player who was the best at their position in NSW/Aus other then Buderus and Johns. Uate was a top 2 winger in the nrl when he was top try scorer and getting the dally m awards and K Gidley was only ever there for his utility value.

But I’m glad we’re not like the raiders and can’t attract a star player like Mitchell Pearce for example.

Fitzgibbon could be playing for NSW in 12/18 months at the rate he is going but we’re never gonna be teams like the broncos which churn out rep players and at the same time can keep all of them.
 
Brian Smith ruined our junior programme. He basically got rid of an entire generation of our juniors and brought in discards from Sydney clubs for our under 20s, and none of them kicked on. I think Con Mika was the most successful of that lot. Any good kids from the Hunter from about 2007 till Tinkler put a lot of money into our juniors in 2014 found somewhere else to go.
Our juniors are now in the best shape they have been since 2006. We are throwing up players like Levi, Cogger, Lamb, the Saifitis, Sione, Tevita Pangai, Joe Tapine, Brodie Jones, Pasami Saulo, Matt Croker etc etc.

It basically took 10 years to repair the damage done by Smith. For a lot of years we were getting 1 or 2 players into rep sides if we were lucky, and I think it was 2016 we got something like 14 into NSW 16s, 18s and 20s.

Smith wasn't totally to blame I suppose. He did start the rot, but the club nearly went broke in those years also, and the first place cuts were made was the lower grades. At one point we had all volunteer staff in the juniors and had farmed out reserve grade to Wyong to run.
 
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The only guy that we lost that seemed to resemble something of a player was Kade Snowden. And even that was due to the rumblings of his neck issues which escalated when he came back to Newcastle. Unsurprisingly when the peptide supply stopped he like many others stopped being superhuman and just lazy penalty prone defender.

The clubs biggest mistake was not letting smith finish his work at Newcastle. He got players he wanted who followed the style of play he wanted and fit that and we were an entertaining side to watch. Without the star players.

He was basically made a scapegoat and the club dusted their hands off him when he conveniently was poached by the roosters.

To think Bennett didn’t do any better with 5x the budget on staff, and maybe more pulling power with the salary cap
 
Surely Paul Harragon gets a mention, and our first official Australian rep player Mark Sargent.

Edit, Slots mentioned Chief above, I missed it.
 
The only guy that we lost that seemed to resemble something of a player was Kade Snowden. And even that was due to the rumblings of his neck issues which escalated when he came back to Newcastle. Unsurprisingly when the peptide supply stopped he like many others stopped being superhuman and just lazy penalty prone defender.

The clubs biggest mistake was not letting smith finish his work at Newcastle. He got players he wanted who followed the style of play he wanted and fit that and we were an entertaining side to watch. Without the star players.

He was basically made a scapegoat and the club dusted their hands off him when he conveniently was poached by the roosters.

To think Bennett didn’t do any better with 5x the budget on staff, and maybe more pulling power with the salary cap
Smith just bought any player in any grade that no one else wanted. He filled our firstgrade, reserve grade and under 20s with rejects from other clubs, and scrapped together 17 that didn't have too many injuries or personality defects to make up his side.
His whole plan was to take anyone cheap and try to find some gems amongst the dross. He didn't have a grand plan to buy players he wanted - he had a grand plan to go through the garbage heap of the NRL and find something others threw out that he could still use.
Players loved him at first for giving them a chance, and then realised he threw them back on the scrapheap if they had any slipups. The reason he only lasted 3 years at any club was because he did a "seagull" at every club (came in squawking, **** all over everything, and left).
 
Smith just bought any player in any grade that no one else wanted. He filled our firstgrade, reserve grade and under 20s with rejects from other clubs, and scrapped together 17 that didn't have too many injuries or personality defects to make up his side.
His whole plan was to take anyone cheap and try to find some gems amongst the dross. He didn't have a grand plan to buy players he wanted - he had a grand plan to go through the garbage heap of the NRL and find something others threw out that he could still use.
Players loved him at first for giving them a chance, and then realised he threw them back on the scrapheap if they had any slipups. The reason he only lasted 3 years at any club was because he did a "seagull" at every club (came in squawking, **** all over everything, and left).

He couldn’t buy rep players because no one was going to a club that was rebuilding so he had to make do with what was out there. The next best thing is find players who can play the style of play you want to coach.
A lot of the players from those reserve grade sides were bought in and their game plan revolves around a certain halfback who ended up retiring and weren’t really affective otherwise so again, have to make do.
Already had a few players set like Gidley, Mullen, Buderus and Simpson to build the team around and Gidley was the type of player who thrived Under Brian’s system because he gave him a specific set of instructions in what to do and he did those to the best of his ability, and he didn’t have to be razzle dazzle either.
Amongst other players.
His plan was simple, Props with size who didn’t need to be fancy with the ball, wide running backrowers who were lean and who could offload and didn’t have to rack up 50 tackles each game.

Didn’t hit the nail on every single signing but most of the replacements of the guys who were there already were better and that’s a fact.
 
He couldn’t buy rep players because no one was going to a club that was rebuilding so he had to make do with what was out there. The next best thing is find players who can play the style of play you want to coach.
A lot of the players from those reserve grade sides were bought in and their game plan revolves around a certain halfback who ended up retiring and weren’t really affective otherwise so again, have to make do.
Already had a few players set like Gidley, Mullen, Buderus and Simpson to build the team around and Gidley was the type of player who thrived Under Brian’s system because he gave him a specific set of instructions in what to do and he did those to the best of his ability, and he didn’t have to be razzle dazzle either.
Amongst other players.
His plan was simple, Props with size who didn’t need to be fancy with the ball, wide running backrowers who were lean and who could offload and didn’t have to rack up 50 tackles each game.

Didn’t hit the nail on every single signing but most of the replacements of the guys who were there already were better and that’s a fact.
None of that is true.
He was the ultimate "moneyball" coach. He just picked through the scrapheap till he got lucky.
The reason he coached for decades and never won a thing was because you don't find premiership winning players on the scrapheap.
 
Don’t know too much about what he did with our juniors but I do know that our most consistent and entertaining football of the the past 12 years was under Smith. I thoroughly enjoyed watching us play in 2008 and 2009.
 
Lower grades were exciting under Smith too. You'd get a whole new side every second week. All year there were players coming in for 2 or 3 weeks, never to be seen again.
To be fair to him, he had an incredible knowledge of every player's strengths and weaknesses across all grades - and most of the reserve graders in the NRL as well.
Wayne Bennett probably couldn't name half of reserve grade, but Smith knew everything about them, even guys like Ben Taia (Zeb's brother) and Willie Tupou (Anthony's brother) who each had 2 or 3 games before being cut - as did about 20 other players a year in reserve grade and another 20 in under 20s.
 
None of that is true.
He was the ultimate "moneyball" coach. He just picked through the scrapheap till he got lucky.
The reason he coached for decades and never won a thing was because you don't find premiership winning players on the scrapheap.

Still got 4 grand finals out of it which is more then most coaches can say.
He wouldn’t have had to clean out our roster if it didn’t resemble a nsw cup team after joey retired.
 
He wouldn’t have had to clean out our roster if it didn’t resemble a nsw cup team after joey retired.

They were all good local boys trying hard! Everyone wants to support a team full of Luke Quigleys and Regan Tanners running last.
 
They were all good local boys trying hard! Everyone wants to support a team full of Luke Quigleys and Regan Tanners running last.

Can’t believe how good Joey made some of those guys look. Only knights fans know who those players are 10 years on I reckon, that’s how irrelevant they became
 
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