ROUND 18 - MELBOURNE STORM V NEWCASTLE KNIGHTS

Game day poll

  • NEWCASTLE 13+

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • NEWCASTLE 1 - 12

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • DRAW

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • MELBOURNE 1 - 12

    Votes: 4 23.5%
  • MELBOURNE 13+

    Votes: 8 47.1%

  • Total voters
    17
Some of the rules need to be adjusted next season now we have seen the good and the bad of it all. The tackle count restart needs to be made clearer and altered to say a penalty instead of a restart inside possession sides 20.
Another problem I have with the game is the one on one steal, Storm have perfected it, 3 tacklers hold up the ball carrier so tackle is not complete then 2 fall off as the other has hold of ball and rips it out using the tackled players weight falling to ground to assist. Once more than one tackler is involved then a steal cannot be attempted even if others drop off or a penalty occurs.
This 100% like i realise 2 drop off but the process but for me the stripping is all ready in motion. Needs to be a penalty. Trust Storm to exploit more grey areas of the game🙄
 
The fact people here can still accept a 48 - 4 loss under any circumstances proves the fans and club and coach are just not interested in the knights winning a comp, any other club would call it unacceptable but apparently for the knights its good enough.
 
Still maintain that we really don’t know where this team is. If we can go into a pre-season with no one hurt, and then have a run with injury more like what Penrith & Parra have had over the last couple of years, and we’re worse than like 6th-7th, then I’ll accept AOB has no idea what he’s doing and the whole playing group sucks.

Yes, yes, I know. Melbourne & Easts get injuries and keep winning. But realistically we’re decades behind them in terms of our systems & standards in lower grades, player development etc. Only Penrith have really arguably caught up to them, but even they have clearly been hit pretty hard by injuries to Luai & especially Cleary, and I’d argue are a lot more reliant on a core group of players than Melb/Easts.

Playing really, really consistently well in this league relies on continuity & stability in the playing group - that ability to adapt to injuries becomes easier if you’ve had a chance to build continuity before that happens. You can’t just show up to a new club on the other end of an iffy Browny rebuild, have to replace guys and plug them in wherever for two seasons in a row, and expect to be at the top of the table. If you think Bellamy or Robbo could show up and instantly make Newcastle as good as their current clubs by glaring hard enough, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Would they go better than they have been under Adzy? Possibly a bit, they’ve got way more experience than him. But coaches aren’t miracle workers, the organisation as a whole has to improve.
 
The fact people here can still accept a 48 - 4 loss under any circumstances proves the fans and club and coach are just not interested in the knights winning a comp, any other club would call it unacceptable but apparently for the knights its good enough.

Mate Broncos fans are as demanding as any fan base you can name, they literally drive past training and scream abuse at the players & throw stuff over the fence with messages demanding this or that person should be sacked… and it has all the persuasive impact on the playing group of a custard pie dropped from the top of a ladder.

It really doesn’t matter what we think.
 
Basically everyone was exposed by Melbourne looking at their tries:

1. Knights numbered up well but Crossland plants his feet and Hynes skips outside him. Poor read by Mann creates a huge gap olam strolls through.

2. Jacob and Fitz lazy around the ruck in the middle, Hughes with the clean line break to put Munster under the posts

3. Really weak tackle from ponga on Jennings, any FB in the NRL is expected to stop that try. (Recurring theme, KP is a poor one on one defender)

4. Watson doesn't attack a bouncing storm kick and pays the price. More poor FB play.

5. Olam clowns Mann with a fend for the line break and nice kick to Hynes

6. Ordinary kick from Clifford on the storm line sees them go 100m to score. Weak effort from Barnett on Hughes.

7. Huge overlap on the Knights left hand side. This try actually is a result of the play before where the storm make a break on the right. Lots of things not going well but King is lazy pushing across which leaves the gap (you can see Brailey is pointing at King to push cause he knows what is happening)

8. Another one where lots goes wrong. Crossland trips getting back to marker and frizz doesn't even bother, he's wandering back onside with his back turned. Munster exploits the lack of markers to get in behind the ruck and puts olam in untouched.

In terms of our attack we basically did nothing, the best part was obviously the try. Strong runs from Fitz and Jacob get the storm going backwards. Watson plays off the back of that getting into dummy half with a lovely ball to put Clifford in a gap, nice ball from him to put young in the corner.

The other play that comes to mind in the first half was Clifford putting King through the line with a great short ball. At the time I thought if it was Dan or Jacob on the end of it they score but that's probably unfair on King in the end, it was really only a half break.
 
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Reading that back the storm didn't methodically break us down in the way you would traditionally expect, really only try 7 with creating the big overlap.

But they didn't have to with all the individual errors and poor effort plays.
 
I want him to tell us what went wrong and what he took from that to improve, which is what he did.

You seem to want him to apologize, put on a hair shirt, sack everyone he can make a scapegoat etc etc. In short - do everything but look at what went wrong and what he can do to fix it.

I get sick of all these "excuses" calls when the coaches talk about the actual reasons things are happening.

We should employ Scott Morrison to do our media in future. He can get out there and blame everyone from the ballboys to V'landys and claim nothing we did needs to be looked at and improved.

In short, I was very happy with the presser where O'Brien said we had a bad week, listed why, took responsibility for what was in his control, and said he needs to fix it. That's exactly what I wanted to hear from him. No empty apologies or blame shifting.
Well alot off experts that analyse the game disagree with you... And they think obrien was nothing but full off excuses...and are saying it is exactly why newcastle are so far off the pace and Melbourne are the stand outs....
 
Last 11 storm games - 9x 40+ scores (one being 66). That's not an excuse that's where they are vs everyone.

The back end of our season starts this weekend. If we loose the next 2 then shut the book on 2021
 
I agree with Slots assessment re the errors/poor play that led to Storm tries and Dan's insights from Simmo re the effort on effort plays...but I also concur with Harvey's assessment re our ability to get some consistency of the playing roster on the paddock.

Our two biggest problems are;

* we are a team who is psychologically/mentally fragile, with a lack of true on-field leaders outside of Pearce...if he is not there, we don't have anybody else with any true leadership qualities that can impact our on-field mindset when we are under pressure - we are specials at pressure that is created through our own unforced errors and we do it early in games. Guarantee that you could read the match discussion threads from every game over the past few seasons and 95% of our losses would reflect 2 soft errors in our first 5 minutes....and we have no resilience to recover from that

* Again, we are severely impacted by not being able to have stability in our spine...as a club with no depth, we need our first string 1, 6, 7 and 9 to be on the paddock 80% plus a season for us to competitively make the 8...the Storm spine is relatively stable and they have had the time for combinations to be built and embedded - we have had our first string spine on deck twice in the last 2 plus seasons...and we look a different side when that happens

There are other issues that are less in our control that can impact on the game including unconscious (and sometimes conscious) bias ...but that can be saved for another post
 
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I think it’s kind of a tie between Ponga & Pearce now as to who’s most important. You’d have to say there’s something about Pearce where his teammates love playing with him, that “follow me” attitude he has means that in general we’ll play to a higher standard. But without Ponga we struggle to convert any dominance we might get into points, and KP has at times single-handedly willed us over the line in games where the team as a whole has not played well.

Brailey individually is the hardest working player in the team and should definitely be invested in as the captain going forward, but his leadership qualities are still developing I think. Not impressed that more of his teammates aren’t shamed into following him though without him needing to scream at him like Pearce does - surely the littlest guy on the field playing ten times tougher than you are should embarrass you?
 
Guarantee that you could read the match discussion threads from every game over the past few seasons and 95% of our losses would reflect 2 soft errors in our first 5 minutes....and we have no resilience to recover from that
This is so true … and I’m not even sure it’s a resilience to recover thing, I think you can just tell with this side very quickly if they’ve bothered to show up and play or not.

Very seldom in the last few years would they have conceded an early try or two and actually tried to turn it around.

On Saturday they looked like they’d just got out of bed, tbh. Within five minutes it was all over, attitude wasn’t there.
 
I think it’s kind of a tie between Ponga & Pearce now as to who’s most important. You’d have to say there’s something about Pearce where his teammates love playing with him, that “follow me” attitude he has means that in general we’ll play to a higher standard. But without Ponga we struggle to convert any dominance we might get into points, and KP has at times single-handedly willed us over the line in games where the team as a whole has not played well.

Brailey individually is the hardest working player in the team and should definitely be invested in as the captain going forward, but his leadership qualities are still developing I think. Not impressed that more of his teammates aren’t shamed into following him though without him needing to scream at him like Pearce does - surely the littlest guy on the field playing ten times tougher than you are should embarrass you?
I don't think Brailey has or will ever have the temperament or personality to give players a serve/rev up on the field when they NEED it...not a criticism, just a reflection of what I see in his personality....and these players are not affected enough by 'shame' to show that it will influence their mindset on the field

Ponga may become stronger in that area as he ages/matures...but he is not there yet

BUT our side NEEDS a strong on field voice and it is only Pearce that gives the tough love out on the paddock - nobody else in our playing ranks has that ability and capacity. I would bet money that our for and against whilst Pearce is on the field versus when he is not, regardless of the games result, would be markedly lower overall when he is there
 
I don't think Brailey has or will ever have the temperament or personality to give players a serve/rev up on the field when they NEED it...not a criticism, just a reflection of what I see in his personality....and these players are not affected enough by 'shame' to show that it will influence their mindset on the field

Ponga may become stronger in that area as he ages/matures...but he is not there yet

BUT our side NEEDS a strong on field voice and it is only Pearce that gives the tough love out on the paddock - nobody else in our playing ranks has that ability and capacity. I would bet money that our for and against whilst Pearce is on the field versus when he is not, regardless of the games result, would be markedly lower overall when he is there
To me, the guy who needs to start doing that is DSaf. He is referred to around the club as the alpha male, he should have the confidence of knowing he can play at the very top level, now he needs to start telling the blokes around him what he expects of them, sometimes forcefully.
 
I gave it a bit of a break before raising this but I really get frustrated with the double standards that relate to how the top teams versus the 'also rans' are adjudicated.

We are supposed to be stamping out high shots but is seems OK to make Dom Young's broken nose a revenue raising exercise for the NRL instead of protecting a young player from dangerous contact to the head?!

The shot that put Ponga in a HIA assessment was opportunistic (i.e. no intent) but it wasn't self preservation - he had the time to make a conscious decision to intentionally turn his shoulder and lunge (albeit over a short distance) at Ponga with a force intended to get a cheap shot on a player whose body had relaxed....the same shot they howl blue murder about when a player is hit late (usually from behind) after the ball has gone.

I am pretty sure that if the same thing had been done by Barnett to Nicho Hynes, we would have seen an on field penalty, probably 10 in the bin and a week or 2 on the side lines...even the Fox commentators expected that it warranted further action.

Again, the NRL are trying to 1) protect the players, particularly the 'stars' of the game from being cheap shotted out of the sport and 2) sending a message to parents of young kids they want to take up the sport that they are serious about cleaning up the game but are not making their actions consistent with their rhetoric.

Rant over
 
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Yeah I saw people saying Kamikamica didn’t cheap shot KP. How dumb can you get. When you’re *not* trying to hit someone, do you turn your shoulder in towards their head and lunge?

I don’t think there’s intentional rigging by the referees, but I think there’s definitely unconscious bias at play in a lot of stuff which gets looked at more closely and what doesn’t, on what gets the benefit of the doubt. Forward passes which get let go vs ones which don’t, offside calls on kick chases where one side will get the benefit of the doubt and another will have the video ref getting the microscope out… I think sides like the Roosters, Melbourne, Souths benefit from this a lot. The better sides benefit from the assumption they’ve executed correctly, and also from the classic “protected species” treatment for which Billy Slater was the poster boy.
 
On a slightly related topic, I thought Ponga would get smashed in origin, but no one took a cheap shot at him at all.
He must think origin is a doddle - no one cracks you in the head at all.
 
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