Kalyn Ponga discussion

If he’s that worried about head knocks again, maybe give him 4-5 weeks off to get himself back in the game.
We’d get an idea on what we’re like without him and either put the better off without KP argument to bed or reinforce it.
We could also get the old KP back and finish the season with some hope and excitement for next year… that can be squashed in the first 4 rounds.
Our season is done, so it couldn’t do any harm.
 
I wondered if that big winning streak was because Ponga was out for so long. The team had to stop relying on him and expecting him to do everything and learned to all play their part without him. When Ponga came back he was able to chime in where needed, but they were able to score all over the park.
 
waynesworld said:
This comment was what I found harsh. More than half those players have at different stages had massive question marks about how to get the best out them. KP playing with 50 different spine combinations since joining us is completely nuts and has been addressed for next year but the problem presently is still there. Next week there’s going to be another change at halfback and potentially hooker. I think the riddle of Ponga has been figured out, get an average to good halfback, Ponga will tear teams apart.
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Alright I’ve thought about what you said and yes, that’s fair.

To take Knights specific frustration out of it: obviously Kalyn is a super duper talented player, attacking dynamite. But there are two types of match winners.

Some match winners are the ones who are elite at the baseline stuff which gets you in position to win games - elite middle forwards obviously. Cleary. Certain backs like Dylan Edwards, Tedesco. Brian To’o.

Some match winners aren’t the ones who get you in position to win. They’re the icing on the cake. They ram home a dominant position, or they make the difference in a close contest between two great teams. Ryan Papenhyuzen. Reece Walsh. Stephen Crichton is a classic example (talking about his on field play, I know he’s a good captain). If Latrell Mitchell didn’t get himself suspended all the time, he’d be as pure an example of this as you could imagine.

Kalyn is a lot more in the second category. He doesn’t have a huge impact on our winning percentage. But by the same token he has decided tight games (our win over the Dolphins to make finals last year for example), and ripped teams apart when our team has been dominant. We have tried again and again to turn him into a “baseline” match winner, and most of his best footy for us has come when we’ve abandoned that and he’s been the icing instead. I just don’t think it’s who he is.

So, if he’s going to be the difference in us winning a premiership, we need to have way better “baseline” players. As Les says: a really good organising halfback is probably essential, for a start. Better forwards. Better backs.

This isn’t going to happen terribly quickly. We need to be smart like Canberra. Get great prospects in when they’re young. Mould them into what we need. POS’ recruitment & retention has overwhelmingly been of young emerging forwards (outside of Brown and the Sharpe extension). So it’s pretty clear that’s what we’re trying to do. No quick fixes.

But it’s going to take years. Cody Hopwood is probably our best forward prospect. He may be *four* years away from being a really good, week to week first grader. Not one or two. Four. That’s not a reflection on a lack of talent or anything. That’s just reality.

I know we don’t want to hear about rebuilds but honestly we never really did one. Not really.

In all honesty, just from Kalyn’s perspective: he’s 27. The next few years will likely be his peak years. It’s almost irresponsible to not tell the dude - hey, we think we can get where we need to be, but it’s going to be a long process. By the time we get there you may be 32 years old. Are you up for that?

No name calling, no criticism of Kalyn as a person here. But Sharpe is 21 years old. He’s a local junior. He’ll never be as expensive as Kalyn, most likely. He’s just obviously more of a natural fullback. We may undermine his career forcing him to play 6 rather than putting him in his best role. He will hit his prime pretty much exactly when, hopefully, our key young forwards really hit their straps.

Whatever you might think about Dylan Brown’s deal, it’s done now. He’s a natural 6. He’s still quite young.

I’m not saying we should pack KP up in a truck and ship him off, but we should have an honest conversation about where we’re at. It may result in him going to a club closer to truly competing for a premiership, and him holding up that trophy elsewhere. That would be hard to take. But I honestly don’t think it will happen for him in a Knights jersey, and there’s reason to believe that there’s a better chance of it happening in the future for the Knights if he’s not there.

I would rather be wrong about this than right.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
So, if he’s going to be the difference in us winning a premiership, we need to have way better “baseline” players. As Les says: a really good organising halfback is probably essential, for a start. Better forwards. Better backs.
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It's also hard to do when you are paying KP $1.5m a year. How many guys do the Raiders have on over $600k outside Tapine? Maybe papalii and young... That's how they are so deep.

We're going the storm route with "stars" and scrubs, except the stars are questionable.
 
Yep so for it all to make sense at all quickly we basically need Dylan Brown to become a great genuine #7. Within like the next 2-3 seasons at most.

We'd need some serious, borderline miraculous, recruitment wins on top of that.

We'd need young guys we already have to come along very, very quickly.

That's a lot that we'd need to go right.
 
slotmachine said:
It's also hard to do when you are paying KP $1.5m a year. How many guys do the Raiders have on over $600k outside Tapine? Maybe papalii and young... That's how they are so deep.

We're going the storm route with "stars" and scrubs, except the stars are questionable.
Click to expand...
I said this a few years ago and it would never happen, but I’d love to have Ricky here as a coach. I hope he gets the Raiders to a premiership before he’s done.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Alright I’ve thought about what you said and yes, that’s fair.

To take Knights specific frustration out of it: obviously Kalyn is a super duper talented player, attacking dynamite. But there are two types of match winners.

Some match winners are the ones who are elite at the baseline stuff which gets you in position to win games - elite middle forwards obviously. Cleary. Certain backs like Dylan Edwards, Tedesco. Brian To’o.

Some match winners aren’t the ones who get you in position to win. They’re the icing on the cake. They ram home a dominant position, or they make the difference in a close contest between two great teams. Ryan Papenhyuzen. Reece Walsh. Stephen Crichton is a classic example (talking about his on field play, I know he’s a good captain). If Latrell Mitchell didn’t get himself suspended all the time, he’d be as pure an example of this as you could imagine.

Kalyn is a lot more in the second category. He doesn’t have a huge impact on our winning percentage. But by the same token he has decided tight games (our win over the Dolphins to make finals last year for example), and ripped teams apart when our team has been dominant. We have tried again and again to turn him into a “baseline” match winner, and most of his best footy for us has come when we’ve abandoned that and he’s been the icing instead. I just don’t think it’s who he is.

So, if he’s going to be the difference in us winning a premiership, we need to have way better “baseline” players. As Les says: a really good organising halfback is probably essential, for a start. Better forwards. Better backs.

This isn’t going to happen terribly quickly. We need to be smart like Canberra. Get great prospects in when they’re young. Mould them into what we need. POS’ recruitment & retention has overwhelmingly been of young emerging forwards (outside of Brown and the Sharpe extension). So it’s pretty clear that’s what we’re trying to do. No quick fixes.

But it’s going to take years. Cody Hopwood is probably our best forward prospect. He may be *four* years away from being a really good, week to week first grader. Not one or two. Four. That’s not a reflection on a lack of talent or anything. That’s just reality.

I know we don’t want to hear about rebuilds but honestly we never really did one. Not really.

In all honesty, just from Kalyn’s perspective: he’s 27. The next few years will likely be his peak years. It’s almost irresponsible to not tell the dude - hey, we think we can get where we need to be, but it’s going to be a long process. By the time we get there you may be 32 years old. Are you up for that?

No name calling, no criticism of Kalyn as a person here. But Sharpe is 21 years old. He’s a local junior. He’ll never be as expensive as Kalyn, most likely. He’s just obviously more of a natural fullback. We may undermine his career forcing him to play 6 rather than putting him in his best role. He will hit his prime pretty much exactly when, hopefully, our key young forwards really hit their straps.

Whatever you might think about Dylan Brown’s deal, it’s done now. He’s a natural 6. He’s still quite young.

I’m not saying we should pack KP up in a truck and ship him off, but we should have an honest conversation about where we’re at. It may result in him going to a club closer to truly competing for a premiership, and him holding up that trophy elsewhere. That would be hard to take. But I honestly don’t think it will happen for him in a Knights jersey, and there’s reason to believe that there’s a better chance of it happening in the future for the Knights if he’s not there.

I would rather be wrong about this than right.
Click to expand...
The saddest part is that you're right, everything you've said is correct.

We signed Kalyn at 18 y.o. and brought him into an aimless system which had a general vision about being on an upward trajectory with an intent to sign and develop good players and progress towards a premiership with our generational talent, a stroke of sheer luck. We didn't know it at the time but that upwards trajectory hit a glass ceiling the moment AOB walked into the club.

A more ambitious and impatient club administration should've identified this and dealt with it 2-3 years in to AOBs tenure when the vision for our pathway to a premiership was no clearer than the year previous, and the year previous to that. Instead they didn’t act, they hoped for success instead of demanding it and the result is today's dilemma - Ponga isn't a teenager anymore, the club doesn't have a pathway to a premiership with him at the club anymore because we are a bunch of ****ing losers at heart who just welcomed average results, week after week, year after year signalling to club administration that provided the club is in the black everything is OK.

Well done to everyone, its 2025, we've gone sideways for 6 years and now it's too late to win it with Ponga here. I wonder how many decades that will cost us
 
The problem is in the salary cap teams generally win by having an abundance of talent coming through/under their value, Ponga at least gets at minimum what he really deserves, perhaps slightly more, which affects the rest of the team and quality we can afford. We sadly can't recruit/don't have enough great players under their worth. Hopefully with POS this changes going forth.
 
I’ve been thinking ahead to next season. Sharpe to fullback, Ponga to 6, and Brown to 7 might be the way to go. I believe the team would benefit more from having a more traditional fullback like Sharpe.

As for Ponga defending in the front line and his concussion concerns.. I don’t know. At some point, he either toughens up or he moves on. That said, Lockyer was never a strong defender, but he made it work when he shifted to 5/8th. I think Ponga has a similar skill set. Either way, next year is make or break for his future at Newcastle.
 
Oliver said:
I’ve been thinking ahead to next season. Sharpe to fullback, Ponga to 6, and Brown to 7 might be the way to go. I believe the team would benefit more from having a more traditional fullback like Sharpe.

As for Ponga defending in the front line and his concussion concerns.. I don’t know. At some point, he either toughens up or he moves on. That said, Lockyer was never a strong defender, but he made it work when he shifted to 5/8th. I think Ponga has a similar skill set. Either way, next year is make or break for his future at Newcastle.
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Ponga will never return to 5/8. That ship has sailed . Concussion has nothing to do with toughness . Geez!
 
Oliver said:
I’ve been thinking ahead to next season. Sharpe to fullback, Ponga to 6, and Brown to 7 might be the way to go. I believe the team would benefit more from having a more traditional fullback like Sharpe.

As for Ponga defending in the front line and his concussion concerns.. I don’t know. At some point, he either toughens up or he moves on. That said, Lockyer was never a strong defender, but he made it work when he shifted to 5/8th. I think Ponga has a similar skill set. Either way, next year is make or break for his future at Newcastle.
Click to expand...
How does one toughen up from concussions?
 
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