NRL Round 23 - Knights Vs Panthers - 6:00pm Friday 8th August - McDonald Jones Stadium

We should get every minute we can out of Brails during his final few games as a Knight, given the amount of time he missed during his Knights tenure. *

Guessing Crokes or Cant goes to lock and Phoenix goes to hooker if Brails goes down or needs to be spelled.

* Joking.
 
PS. Happy to see Jackson dropped for Arthur. He's been ordinary, and he's not here next season, whereas there's still a chance that Jake will be. Surprised Gamble was dropped, but not completely surprised after the Raiders game.

I hope they've got some plan for Greg...swap him out of wing at the end of sets? Get more kick pressure on Cleary and Talagi so they can't target him. IDK, but if AOB doesn't have a plan for Greg, I'm sure the Cleary's will.
 
Jones not named in any grade.
His stats in reserve grade last week were unusually low - must have picked up an injury during the game.
 
What are peoples thoughts on Matt Arthur? I don’t watch many cup games, probably only 3 this year and he hasn’t stood out to me. Has he earnt a spot in the top grade. If he has it would be good to see him play a few games and it looks like he’ll have some sort of role in 2026.
 
He's very talented and he's the exact sort of long term prospect the Knights should have been looking for for years & have consistently failed to sign since acquiring Pearce, almost always chasing more experienced older back up players with much lower ceilings. He's 20, a baby basically given the average age at which hookers usually make first grade & especially the age at which they tend to come good, and it's silly to worry too much about his lack of first grade playing time so far. If you are a *good* first grade hooker before you're like 25 years old you're a freak of nature.

The failure to secure talented spine prospects & develop them, which demands patience & a long term vision, has been the club's biggest one since Wests Group took over. I like that we're not trying to rush his development. That's a rare bit of common sense from us historically & if Arthur's happy to be patient rather than demanding he be handed a jersey right now that's also the kind of attitude & character we want at the club.

Basically - let's stress about it when it sounds like there are reasons to stress. I know we all want results right now (and this results pressure is what drives clubs to overpay for experienced mediocrity rather than make smarter long term bets), but I'm happy that we finally seem to be thinking about what it might take to be good over a long period rather than just as good as possible next season.

And no we never did that under Brown, all he did was offer platitudes while huge contracts for old guys came off the books & then he tried and failed to overspend for different old guys. He had to have his arm twisted to even look at Ponga. Basically packed the bags of a lot of our best young prospects for them and kneecapped the development of the ones who stayed. Absolute fraud who just said the word "rebuild" a lot while building nothing.
 
Thanks Harv, I just did a comparison with Harry Grant. He played 1 game in seasons 2018 (aged 20 season) and 2019 (aged 21 season) before going on loan in 2020 then when back at the storm mostly came off the bench in 2021. Obviously the two key differences are the Storm are always in contention for premierships so don’t have low stakes games like the Knights have now plus had the best hooker of all time to learn behind early. However, Brailey is still a good first grader and no doubt ahead of him at this stage. Seems like the club are doing the right thing not just picking him in First Grade for the sake of things?
 
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