NRL Round 1 - Knights Vs Cowboys - 1:15pm Sunday 1st March (AEDT) - Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas

jamesgould said:
Not sure I’m convinced about the theory that Holbrook has unlocked the key to premiership glory which is not telling anyone who will be our starting halves.

He said himself he’d decide in the first week of pre-season how it would all work and spend the rest of the time working on those combinations. Ok, Ponga’s injury hasn’t helped, but we’re days out from the season opener and it all still seems up in the air, to me.
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The fact we'd had a full preseason and didn't have a set 1-6-7-9 in mind is scary.

I honestly think Crossland is our 9, Smith is our 14 with Crossland moving into lock after 20 minutes and Sharpe at 7.

But then Sharpe spent most of preseason training at fullback.

It's enough to make my head implode.
 
We seem to have already given up on Smith's long kicking game now that it's evident he has the smallest boot of all available options (which up until the trial was apparently an essential attribute we needed alongside Brown but suddenly isn't important anymore). If Brown's halves partner is going to be parked on one side of the field, not tasked with directing the team around and not being relied on for long kicking I think it's pretty obvious there's a more dangerous option for that role than Smith. In the absence of a genuinely good organising halfback to pair with Brown, maybe having your three biggest attacking threats on the field and around the ball for 80 minutes is as good a plan as any.

For the left vs right debate - Brown is our best halves defender and Lucas the strongest of the back-rowers, makes sense to want to split them up on that end of the field with Smith and McEwen/Cant all being pretty suspect defenders thus far. The other halves option is also stronger in this area.
 
bremsstrahlung said:
Interestingly Keary makes a comment re his trial game vs Dragons “he did exactly what he did at the Roosters, 6 good moments and then 3 or 4 errors, and you can’t do that as a 7”. Which may explain why they were content to let him go.
‘He needs to play the percentages more, and be calmer, but he’s a punter, takes risks, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Some you encourage, some you say, dial it back. Ponga punts as well, but he’s generally got better odds than smith’ paraphrased.
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They weren’t. They wanted to keep him, it’s just when a guy is getting offers of $500K and guaranteed first grade, and he’s not that good a stylistic fit with your best half in his early 20’s (Sam Walker’s ideal halves partner is a big, athletic 6 with a massive boot), it becomes very hard to hold onto them. And yeah they were getting DCE in to push for a premiership right now, which IMO is logical when you’re adding Robson, Teddy is in the twilight of his prime, and you’re as stacked in the forwards as they are right now - you only get a window of 1-3 years of having the kind of depth they do, even with the sombrero.

It’s like saying the Storm were content to let Jonah Pezet go - nah man they did everything they could to keep him, but the problem they had with their super expensive spine just solved itself with Pappy’s retirement, meaning there’s no longer any doubt about Grant, Munster & Hughes playing out their careers there. So off he goes. They didn’t want to lose Nicho Hynes either; the Roosters didn’t want to lose Ethan Strange; the Panthers didn’t want to lose Izzy Katoa. You just can’t keep them all. The top clubs produce good young spine prospects in depth and we’re just doing the thing the smarter **** clubs like Canberra do, picking the eyes out of the second tier of those prospects.
 
Kind of arguing semantics…

I mean Penrith don’t want to lose Cleary or Yeo either, and they are managing to keep them.


The clubs are making choices on who they prioritise.

Sure, the Storm really wanted to keep Pezet. But they prioritised keeping Munster and Hughes in the halves over him.

It worked for the Roosters to let Smith go, so they did. He was pretty low on the priority list.
 
mullenmagic said:
We seem to have already given up on Smith's long kicking game now that it's evident he has the smallest boot of all available options (which up until the trial was apparently an essential attribute we needed alongside Brown but suddenly isn't important anymore). If Brown's halves partner is going to be parked on one side of the field, not tasked with directing the team around and not being relied on for long kicking I think it's pretty obvious there's a more dangerous option for that role than Smith. In the absence of a genuinely good organising halfback to pair with Brown, maybe having your three biggest attacking threats on the field and around the ball for 80 minutes is as good a plan as any.
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Issue with this is that Fletch playing through that channel inside Ponga was really really bad at generating space, he just doesn’t have a feel for it (and Ponga also doesn’t have a great feel for creating space for Sharpe IMO, they were oil and water).

I’d still play Smith at 7 whether he’s on the left or right and that podcast brem linked to, Keary breaks down why quite well. If you’re looking to defend what they’re working on now:

- Brown did play on the right mostly in 2024 and wasn’t horrible, he just can’t steer the side around AND kick AND be a running threat like someone like Cleary does… you need to narrow his responsibilities. Maybe he can balance the kicking load while also being run-first in attack. Remains to be seen.
- Sandon played on the left mostly in 2025 and was usually on the first layer or “out in front” as Keary says. Usually the halfback sits on the right but there’s no hard and fast rule on this front and the Knights have very frequently settled on a left-sided 7.

The 2023 system was Hastings or Clune at 7 on the left playing very centrally (both, interestingly, halfbacks with weak boots), Gamble on the right at 6 as a running second receiver and main general play kicker, and yes Ponga swung both sides but where he’d get the ball was not very “symmetrical” - he’d get wider 4 on 4’s as much as possible on the left and on the right he’d mostly be trying to ice 2 on 2’s where Gamble was very often getting the ball behind a lead run from an edge forward as well. I think if after a full pre-season Holbrook settles on almost the exact same system AOB did, just with Sandon in Hastings/Clune’s spot, and Brown replacing Gamble, well… that’s pretty funny.


I would prefer to see what we can do on the left with Brown & Ponga linking up on the left but I don’t know maybe there’s some non-obvious reason why that’s not ideal.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
They weren’t. They wanted to keep him, it’s just when a guy is getting offers of $500K and guaranteed first grade, and he’s not that good a stylistic fit with your best half in his early 20’s (Sam Walker’s ideal halves partner is a big, athletic 6 with a massive boot), it becomes very hard to hold onto them. And yeah they were getting DCE in to push for a premiership right now, which IMO is logical when you’re adding Robson, Teddy is in the twilight of his prime, and you’re as stacked in the forwards as they are right now - you only get a window of 1-3 years of having the kind of depth they do, even with the sombrero.

It’s like saying the Storm were content to let Jonah Pezet go - nah man they did everything they could to keep him, but the problem they had with their super expensive spine just solved itself with Pappy’s retirement, meaning there’s no longer any doubt about Grant, Munster & Hughes playing out their careers there. So off he goes. They didn’t want to lose Nicho Hynes either; the Roosters didn’t want to lose Ethan Strange; the Panthers didn’t want to lose Izzy Katoa. You just can’t keep them all. The top clubs produce good young spine prospects in depth and we’re just doing the thing the smarter **** clubs like Canberra do, picking the eyes out of the second tier of those prospects.
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A little revisionist? He started getting good offers after the roosters said he was free to negotiate.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Issue with this is that Fletch playing through that channel inside Ponga was really really bad at generating space, he just doesn’t have a feel for it.
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This has been your argument against Sharpe as a half all along. My counter to this is there is zero evidence whether he is good at it or not from last year because the hybrid man kept getting in the way. To me it felt like AOB was trying to simplify Sharpe's game in season 1 as a half which in turn complicated Ponga's game to the point where he stifled a lot of our attack. I'd like to see how it plays out under a new coach who trusts Sharpe a bit more.
 
Owey said:
A little revisionist? He started getting good offers after the roosters said he was free to negotiate.
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I think it’s a little naive to think they didn’t have a pretty good idea of the interest out there for him before they asked for the permission.

Owey said:
This has been your argument against Sharpe as a half all along. My counter to this is there is zero evidence whether he is good at it or not from last year because the hybrid man kept getting in the way. To me it felt like AOB was trying to simplify Sharpe's game in season 1 as a half which in turn complicated Ponga's game to the point where he stifled a lot of our attack. I'd like to see how it plays out under a new coach who trusts Sharpe a bit more.
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Just not my takeaway from watching Sharpe & Ponga at all, they switched up who got the ball in what order heaps and it looked bad either way IMO. And I would lean towards it being a little worse with Sharpe closer to the ruck than vice versa. We may just have to agree to disagree on this.
 
browns a great defender and easily the best of all our potential halves. Thats really my only pro of having him line up on the right.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
I think it’s a little naive to think they didn’t have a pretty good idea of the interest out there for him before they asked for the permission.


Just not my takeaway from watching Sharpe & Ponga at all, they switched up who got the ball in what order heaps and it looked bad either way IMO. And I would lean towards it being a little worse with Sharpe closer to the ruck than vice versa. We may just have to agree to disagree on this.
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I was constantly frustrated Ponga was getting in Sharpe's way. I didn't see him get much of a look in at all.
 
So that article about our coaching team a few weeks ago.
In it Hales I think was identified as our attacking coach and he talked about how he first worked with Brown when he first arrived from NZ and said something like he had a great skillset then and still has now.
Maybe Hales thinks the role Brown played as second fiddle to Moses at Parra wasn't his best use for us.
All I want to see from Brown is what he did on the left for Parra and NZ - but maybe Hales has bigger plans - based on what he has always seen in Brown?

Quote from Hales in the Herald article;

For attack coach Hales it was with Parramatta alongside playmaker Dylan Brown.
"This isn't the first time I've coached Dyl, I actually coached him when he first came out from New Zealand to Parramatta as a 17-year-old. He hasn't changed one little bit since then," Hales said.
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I can understand the coaching staff wanting to guide Brown to realise his full potential, which based on the appraisal of his talents and pedigree by this coaching staff, apparently isnt a 2nd fiddle left side fixed 5/8th.

Disagree personally, I reckon his full potential exists within that left-hand side 5/8th profile and his performances for the Kiwis is his potential manifest.

But if the coaching staff want to explore what else they might be able to get out of him, I can get around that. A major concern however is they do what most coaches seem to do and fail to concede the error in their judgement and revert to what has worked, particularly doing so quickly. If they could trial it for a month and change it up that'd be fine. But coaches are rarely that pragmatic
 
Les Misérables said:
I can understand the coaching staff wanting to guide Brown to realise his full potential, which based on the appraisal of his talents and pedigree by this coaching staff, apparently isnt a 2nd fiddle left side fixed 5/8th.

Disagree personally, I reckon his full potential exists within that left-hand side 5/8th profile and his performances for the Kiwis is his potential manifest.

But if the coaching staff want to explore what else they might be able to get out of him, I can get around that. A major concern however is they do what most coaches seem to do and fail to concede the error in their judgement and revert to what has worked, particularly doing so quickly. If they could trial it for a month and change it up that'd be fine. But coaches are rarely that pragmatic
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I think with this stuff, people get a little too caught up in the kicking game. The dominant half? That’s the one who does most of the kicking. But that’s not necessarily true.

I don’t see a contradiction between him being mainly a second receiver in attacking shape, but also taking on the lion’s share of the kicking. You can do that from 5/8. Plenty have. If we make that work I’m sure a lot of the noise about his salary goes away whatever number happens to be on his back. The question mark about what he’s worth came from his role being much smaller than Mitch Moses’.
 
I am happy with Sharpe and Brown, thought it would be them from the beginning, I dont expect an insanely strong start but they have a huge ceiling.
 
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