Official Wooden Spoon 2025 Thread

jamesgould said:
Not really seeing it with our recruitment efforts. Forwards are still very weak.
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Pretty startling data point though: We’re 6-8 with Sharpe this year and 0-10 without him. 5-8 with Ponga and 1-10 without. Here’s a real startling one, 6-7 with Lucas, 0-11 without.

A lot of us have analysed the clunky attack which ****ed up some games early in the season and yeah that was where a lot went wrong, unforgivable, but at the end of the day it is still a year where we kept being robbed of our best go forward players early on, and then once we got them back we were then immediately robbed of our best attacking players (Lucas is kind of both, our best yardage forward and one of our best strike players at the same time). Finally it looked like some stuff was being figured out by the Dolphins game but then our key men are gone for the season and that’s all she wrote. It took too long to figure out. It may be a blessing in disguise that we didn’t get the late season righting of the ship this time.

Once they’re gone theres’s not that much left but fight. That Warriors loss likely knocked the last bit of fight out of them.

I know we want them all just effort their way out of it, and they can go in with great intentions… but the psychology of putting your body on the line, it’s just different when you know your elite stars can create off the back of that vs when you know the guys replacing it couldn’t create an antipasto platter if they were standing in a deli.

Still think we should play Sharpe at centre next year and sign Sandon as a 7, but Sharpe/Ponga/Brown probably does “work” next year if they’re all fit & at times it will look good and get us some more wins. Just have doubts about it working-working as a good enough cohesive unit to break down properly good defences. But as a good enough unit to turn a handful of our losses this year to wins, yeah it’ll “work” I reckon.
 
If Sandon Smith has a brain in his head, he won't sign here. Why would he. We would destroy his career like we keep doing to other players.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Pretty startling data point though: We’re 6-8 with Sharpe this year and 0-10 without him. 5-8 with Ponga and 1-10 without. Here’s a real startling one, 6-7 with Lucas, 0-11 without.

A lot of us have analysed the clunky attack which ****ed up some games early in the season and yeah that was where a lot went wrong, unforgivable, but at the end of the day it is still a year where we kept being robbed of our best go forward players early on, and then once we got them back we were then immediately robbed of our best attacking players (Lucas is kind of both, our best yardage forward and one of our best strike players at the same time). Finally it looked like some stuff was being figured out by the Dolphins game but then our key men are gone for the season and that’s all she wrote. It took too long to figure out. It may be a blessing in disguise that we didn’t get the late season righting of the ship this time.

Once they’re gone theres’s not that much left but fight. That Warriors loss likely knocked the last bit of fight out of them.

I know we want them all just effort their way out of it, and they can go in with great intentions… but the psychology of putting your body on the line, it’s just different when you know your elite stars can create off the back of that vs when you know the guys replacing it couldn’t create an antipasto platter if they were standing in a deli.

Still think we should play Sharpe at centre next year and sign Sandon as a 7, but Sharpe/Ponga/Brown probably does “work” next year if they’re all fit & at times it will look good and get us some more wins. Just have doubts about it working-working as a good enough cohesive unit to break down properly good defences. But as a good enough unit to turn a handful of our losses this year to wins, yeah it’ll “work” I reckon.
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Pretty spot on with all these points tbh.

Would love for us to look competent early on, rather than taking half the season. Vegas could be a blessing, they need to lock in for a big occasion early.
 
I've observed a phenomenon in the big football (soccer) leagues over the last few decades. There will be a minnow team have a really good start to a year. They will eke out wins in low scoring games and sit right in the top handful of teams a couple of months in. All the talk will be about how they are concentrating on defence and how resilient they are. Then things start to turn, a couple of nil all draws, a couple of one nil losses and the narrative starts around "where will there goals come from?". The narrative shifts to their attack, and they usually find some goals. But it is surprising how often the first time they score 2 goals, the opposition scores 3. And that's where the season really turns. They can never seem to score quite enough goals to keep the defence dialled in to where it was earlier in the year. These seasons usually end disastrously. Defence is all about attitude, the resilience goes when the attack doesn’t work to keep the results coming.

Our defence this year stayed dialled in for a LONG time. Once we lost Ponga. Sharpe and Lucas, I knew that defensive resilience would eventually dry up because I had seen it so many times before. It's like the attack needs just enough points in them to make the defence stay switched on. I'd like to see what sports psychologists make of it. That warriors loss must have been so gutting. The last few weeks have been a bridge too far. This isn't an excuse for the boys at all. It is more to point out that, even if defence is the number 1 ingredient to winning consistently, the attack needs at least enough output to keep the minds on the defensive job.
 
Owey said:
I've observed a phenomenon in the big football (soccer) leagues over the last few decades. There will be a minnow team have a really good start to a year. They will eke out wins in low scoring games and sit right in the top handful of teams a couple of months in. All the talk will be about how they are concentrating on defence and how resilient they are. Then things start to turn, a couple of nil all draws, a couple of one nil losses and the narrative starts around "where will there goals come from?". The narrative shifts to their attack, and they usually find some goals. But it is surprising how often the first time they score 2 goals, the opposition scores 3. And that's where the season really turns. They can never seem to score quite enough goals to keep the defence dialled in to where it was earlier in the year. These seasons usually end disastrously. Defence is all about attitude, the resilience goes when the attack doesn’t work to keep the results coming.

Our defence this year stayed dialled in for a LONG time. Once we lost Ponga. Sharpe and Lucas, I knew that defensive resilience would eventually dry up because I had seen it so many times before. It's like the attack needs just enough points in them to make the defence stay switched on. I'd like to see what sports psychologists make of it. That warriors loss must have been so gutting. The last few weeks have been a bridge too far. This isn't an excuse for the boys at all. It is more to point out that, even if defence is the number 1 ingredient to winning consistently, the attack needs at least enough output to keep the minds on the defensive job.
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Main thing I’m taking from this is that Grealish, Ndiaye and Dewsbury-Hall are taking my Toffees into the top four this year!

Nah great post that hits the nail on the head of what I was trying to get at. Players are human beings, not machines. Not even that Penrith side who seemed to play near perfect footy & execute on their game plan at a consistency no one else does.

It’s become a bit fashionable to bag Cleary again but a lot of their psychology comes from him, his steadiness. He’s the best in the comp at kicks which “flip the field” if they are ever under pressure in yardage, and that’s a big part of why their kick chase is the best - subconscious confidence it’s worth the effort. They’ll keep pounding away for 20 minutes of good ball attack without scoring without getting flustered because they have confidence that the pressure will tell and they’ll transition into more expansive ball movement when the time is right. They’ll run harder than anyone else in a field goal set because they’re more confident than any other team that Cleary will execute. Etc.

Also notable that they haven’t been anything like as inevitable of a team this year in tight games and that trade mark patience and sticking to their process has sort of come and gone a bit this year. There are a few reasons for that.
 
Newygirl said:
Absolutely deserved.

Congrats to Phil Gardiner too. 8 seasons in charge, started with a spoon and ended with a spoon.

What a tenure. I guess running an NRL club isn’t as easy as pilfering retirees pensions 👏👏👏
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Hey @ Newy girl, more to your point.
PG from late 2014 has held either a board position (with nrl then transition entity) then CEO from late 2017 under wests. What’s his metric of success? It can’t be on-field results or he’d be out on his ear.

Now, I think the blokes a genius but he is one of a couple of common threads pulling the strings for past 11 yrs that bares scrutiny.

As prime mover P Gardener over 11 seasons:

4 x spoons
1 x 14th
2 x 11th
4 x semis (7th, 7, 5, 8th)

Under his total control as Boss Hogg of wests over 8 seasons:

1 x Spoon
1 x 14th
2 x 11th
4 x semis

Mores the point if successful focused recruitment requires minimum 2 x 1st grade forward packs, for starters, quality depth always indicator of smart planning and for future success via lower grade development.

In the same period of 11 years, knights Reserve grade recorded:

2 x spoons
3 x 2nd last ( forks) (or nearly 5 spoons in decade+)
1 x 3rd last
5 x semis

For all of hierarchys clever planning gradually building to better outcomes over a decade, they finish '25 with a Farking spoon/2nd last in Res G to show for a maybe 1/4 $billon investment, much of those funds as you write from community cash cows. Quote Geoff Toovey here …. Re investigation

A diabolical record if ever there where one.
If it were a listed company on asx the stock would be tanking like the titanic.

And now we all trust it’s simply a matter of moving a few deck chairs - a new coach, a new assistant, a new CEO.
Maybe it's that simple?
Or maybe our villain will still be lurking in the shadows unable to extricate himself from key decisions his record suggests he should never have been making.

Hope not 😫
 
Congrats to Phil Gardiner too. 8 seasons in charge, started with a spoon and ended with a spoon.

What a tenure. I guess running an NRL club isn’t as easy as pilfering retirees pensions
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One thing.... least we earned the Wooden Spoon ....COULDN'T ..score tries...COULDN'T..convert tries . .

COULDN'T...Tackle..2026 prediction we'll be closer to the Spoon next year then the 8.
 
Justajoe said:
One thing.... least we earned the Wooden Spoon ....COULDN'T ..score tries...COULDN'T..convert tries . .

COULDN'T...Tackle..2026 prediction we'll be closer to the Spoon next year then the 8.
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The coach, my friend, the coach.

Watch what a new breeze brings into the clubhouse.

I dont agree that there is something fundamentally broken with the club, if that were true, we wouldnt have organically spawned 2 premierships within 13 years of the clubs founding.

The first hypothesis was that we couldn't defend, something fundamentally wrong with our attitude, between the early 2000s and 2020, then AOB proves that we can defend.

Everyone knows we can attack, that's never been an issue.

I think once Bennett failed to deliver a comp inside of 2-3 seasons, with Roberts at halfback and the likes of Rochow, an ESL retired Willie Mason and a chorus of over the hill and broken stars, in the starting pack, we started believing our own bs that theres something fundamentally broken, because for first time, we couldn't say we were resource poor.

There's nothing stopping us from winning other than our ability to build a good roster under the right coach and sustain a healthy culture for long enough to strike gold with injuries and form. That's all. The rest of it we've got.
 
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The premiership days are long gone and essentially a totally different club. Since then we have gone through the Tinkler/Bennet debacle, then owned by the NRL and now Wests, staff have completely changed in over that time our winning culture from back then, the us vs them mentality and the ethos of hard work are gone. This club just isn't remotely the same club now as it was then.

I noted Buzz saying next year we will get worse, I mean F me I don't know how much worse he thinks we can get. I also thought, every year they make these predictions like experts, and each year teams rise, teams fall but not as they predicted most times. Throw enough darts with your eyes closed and eventually you will hit a bullseye.

Who knows next year, I don't believe we win the spoon next year simply because of the new coach uplift. But we better start setting standards that are not broken in this place or we may as well just fold the club. Words just don't cut it. Someone said not attending games won't affect things, but sure as **** turning up in droves to watch them play with no heart whilst simultaneously talking about how much they are trying for the town, how much they respect the fans, is not working.

Slogan like be the player that other players want to play with, or get comfortable with the uncomfortable are embarrassing things to even mention. Running out to the play it hard, play it tough theme is laughable already well behind on the scoreboard.

What Fletch said was absolutely spot on. We just got pumped big time, by Parra that are not even in contention. We made them look like premiership material. That is inexcusable. Prime example of how this club is nothing like the club from the 90's.

Right now I'm angry, dejected, sad and burned out from supporting this club. I can't see myself renewing, I think I need some time to just be able to switch the TV off and walk away.

And this isn't on AOB alone, the players have to wear this in a big way. The coaches can drive the culture as much as they like but if the players aren't buying in, don't have self respect enough to care about their own performance then what you get, is what you have seen.

Time for a pre-season that includes 2 weeks of brick laying and ditch digging. Followed by 2 weeks of volunteering at homeless shelters and visiting Ronald Macdonald house families, Hospitals. Show them what real work is, show them what real struggle is. Show them what it's like for the kids battling every day to make it to the next one.

Because at the moment they are a pathetic excuse for sportsman, not deserving of half their salary, or the support of the clubs fans.

This pre season the slogan is "No excuses, period!".
 
Joseph Tapine, Tom Starling, Hudson Young & Zac Hosking are key starters on the premiership favourite.

Imagine the world where our starting pack is Tapine, Starling, J Saf, Hosking, Lucas, Barnett. With a bench of Crossland, Josh King, Saulo and McEwen as an impact player rather than playing 80 as a rookie.

I’m even excluding Hudson Young due to the very specific messy circumstances around his departure, and that’s still a ridiculously good pack.

There is nothing constitutionally wrong with our region. The issue has been priorities, planning, long term decision-making.

We can dispute the Dylan Brown decision, but if you look at players from our system around the comp: We produce good forwards, but there aren't a lot of good halves from our region plying their trade elsewhere, so we probably do need to poach an elite half if we want one.

We’re in a state now where we need to sign someone like Trey Mooney but realistically we should not be making another expensive recruitment bid in the pack again after that. Based on the kind of player our production line spits out, that we could end up with awful pack depth is embarrassing, going forward the production line needs to replace every player who leaves, rather than every forward who leaves being replaced by blowing money on the Jack Hetheringtons of the world.

The first step is actually securing young gun forwards like McEwen, Cody Hopwood, bringing back ones who left for no good reason like Saulo and Crouch. If we lock down Bailey Carmichael as soon as we’re allowed to as well I’ll feel like we’re finally on the right track.

We seem to be doing well with fullbacks and outside backs too. That’s a lot of a roster.

Then it’s about making shrewd acquisitions to fill in the other spine spots. The pathways are not spitting out good halves. Fine. It’s not a death sentence. Sign the right players at the right time. The club is a more appealing recruitment destination if they know they’ll be behind a good pack.

Canberra have done what we should have done with a lot of our players. It’s embarrassing and a lesson must be learned.
 
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All said above by HVG is good but we seem to be dodging around the area that really matters, SPINE, we need to sort it out, make it work, get the decisions right, make it work to many IFS and BUTS.
My simple solution, 1 Ponga, has to be. 6 Brown, should be. 7 Sandon/Smith definitely could be, 9 Crossland who else would be. 13 anyone could be but favour Croker the wanta be.
Argument, Brown nominated to be 7 but why if he is our best 6, Sandon Smith touted as our 9 but why if he is our best 7. Crossland is better at 13 but he is better than others at 9. Croker at 13 because he is strong in that position and until others prove or improve Frizell is more likely a 12 or bench prop.
Every other position is automatic and well covered 2-5, 8-12 so fix the spine and we are strong, injury?????
 
Honestly reading the above just makes me even angrier at how badly we've fumbled Kalyn Ponga. What a disgusting ****ing joke. Gardner should be publicly executed for overseeing AOB sleep walk his way through the last 6 years.

We got gifted a generational player. The kind that you should be winning premierships with, because they're that good, and instead, we leaned on Ponga like a crutch lazily compensating for our inexcusable shortcomings. Like how on earth do you have Ponga at the club for that long and not pair him with a decent half? Forget everything else, just a decent 7? The best we could muster was an ESL returnee with a personality disorder
 
Les Misérables said:
Honestly reading the above just makes me even angrier at how badly we've fumbled Kalyn Ponga. What a disgusting ****ing joke. Gardner should be publicly executed for overseeing AOB sleep walk his way through the last 6 years.

We got gifted a generational player. The kind that you should be winning premierships with, because they're that good, and instead, we leaned on Ponga like a crutch lazily compensating for our inexcusable shortcomings. Like how on earth do you have Ponga at the club for that long and not pair him with a decent half? Forget everything else, just a decent 7? The best we could muster was an ESL returnee with a personality disorder
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Yeah I made excuses for it in the past, Pearce did **** us, Clifford was the right kind of move wrong player… but how on God’s green earth do we get midway through 2022 and say, you know what? What we really need to do with this roster is spend $800K+ on an English back rower and $400K+ on a mercurial 6/1 who can’t hold down a jersey for Huddersfield. These deals were being chased for months and months and months. I liked the look of KPP plenty, but it does boggle the mind that the club is trying to plug gaps in the spine with Tyson Gamble and Lachie Miller at this point, and what they decide to do is spend up big on a luxury back rower. Who are the Raiders signing around the same time? Ethan Strange, Kaeo Weekes, Ethan Sanders, etc, giving themselves a bunch of throws at the stumps at putting together an elite, dynamic spine. Are those important?

Then go back before that in early 2020 and the halves we have lined up to play with Pearce are Kurt Mann & exactly one young prospect in Phoenix. We have Barnett, Fitzgibbon, Hosking coming through. Who do we chase? Tyson Frizell! No shade on Frizell, great servant to the club, but the chasing of luxury players while refusing to address biggest areas of need is basically pathological.

There’s sticker shock with the Brown deal but you want to get the best out of Ponga, you need an elite attacking half who’s genuinely a half bringing him on the ball, and it took POS less than a year to sign that. All he did was prioritise it. And Sandon, well, the Raiders wanted him, to compete with Sanders for the 7 jersey next year. I don’t trust my own scouting but I trust theirs.
 
Recruitment has been a basket case for a long time. The turnover of people in that role, all with different plans and priorities has played a huge role. Crazy that it’s taken years to seriously sort a replacement for Pearce - literally the most important position in the side.
 
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