NRL Round 5 - Knights Vs Raiders - 4:05pm Sunday, 5th April - McDonald Jones Stadium

danknights said:
The atmosphere in the last halfa at the game was absolutely electric. The boys were getting it from the crowd and lapping it up. All the old boys in the box had the biggest grins I've seen in a while. Great win and I thought the refereeing was good for both sides other than the hair pull one.
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Reckon he’d have been binned for sure for the hair pull if they didn’t already have a player in the bin. I know it’s probably not right, but I get why they don’t like reducing teams to 11 men.
 
Cracking up at the other Knights forum, a Raiders fan Skeepe blowing up berserk on there and reckons 3 of our tries were no tries and Canberra should have 2 extra tries awarded.
 
People seemed to have really missed a lot of bad commentary blunders from Voss and Blocker yesterday.
Sometimes you don’t have to fill air time with ‘if the Raiders score next they’re in this’ or ‘it’ll be a grandstand finish’ despite if they scored they’d still be down by 8 with the clock against them, I lost count eventually of the bad commentary catch phrases after a while. No one from Ch 9 does that.
Even if you go back to watching old games on YouTube from over 20 years ago on Ch 9. Vossy was no where near as terrible as he is now
It was actually dare I say it tolerable!
 
Something which stands out for me, looking at our middle defenders:

Minutes/tackles:
Phoenix 77/39
J Saf 65/32
Mooney 40/34
Croker 48/32
Graham 35/29
Frizell 40/22
Saulo 15/15

Big part of why the previous coaching staff wrapped J Saf was work rate/1%ers. Under Holbrook he’s not a work rate player. Holbrook wants others doing the dirty work and J Saf focusing on higher leverage/more impactful stuff: Strong carries, big first up contact on key opposing players, being the enforcer.

The thing which makes Payne Haas such an absurd player is that he will have games where he leads both the metres gained AND the tackle count, I highly doubt any other player would have as many games where they’ve made 200 metres and 50 tackles. AND everything he’s doing has the impact you’d get from a really good bench prop. That’s why he’s such a rising tide that lifts all boats, you can throw any average forward with him and they are making both easier carries and fewer tackles at the same time.

For us, J Saf’s career best footy is being enabled by the trust placed in the other guys to facilitate it with their work rate and effort. Always felt like AOB had it the other way around, the Saifitis, Leo etc were supposed to set the example with work rate and Croker, Jones etc were supposed to provide the impact off the back of that.
 
Celticman98 said:
Cracking up at the other Knights forum, a Raiders fan Skeepe blowing up berserk on there and reckons 3 of our tries were no tries and Canberra should have 2 extra tries awarded.
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A lot of the raiders supporters were trying to say their young spine will take time and why they are losing. Outside of Phoenix, pretty sure our spine is even younger at the moment. Hunt 19, Sharpe 21, Smith 23 to Weekes 24. They are great for their ages, Hunt and Sharpe absolutely on a fantastic trajectory.
 
Defence wins games said:
Fox commentary has been negative towards Newcastle for decades. Fox have never recovered from Chief taking a bus load of Knights players to Sydney to sign with the NRL in the Super League days.
It is also no coincidence that weak charactered Fox commentators love to dog ride the Knights at every opportunity.
It is disappointing listening to their one eyed commentary.
We all have control over our remotes.
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The Knights must be playing well for the negativity to be switched to the commentators. Go the Knights. That was a great win. It is good that we have a good half back we will enjoy this year.
 
An excellent article in which JSaf explains why the team is performing so well this year.

Changing our head coach has made a massive difference.

www.nrl.com

'Completely different side': Saifiti embracing new direction at Knights

Without Kalyn Ponga and Dylan Brown, Newcastle have beaten two of the top four teams from last season in consecutive weeks, and the leadership of senior players like Jacob Saifiti has helped make that possible.
www.nrl.com www.nrl.com
 
I know people are annoyed at the commentators pointing out our losing streak at home. Well it was definitely worthy of being a big talking point for me. So how good was it to see and hear the crowd going bananas and the Newcastle chant going up! That final try to Don was just total 2023 vibes.

As for Canberra, I wonder if they’re starting to nervously contemplate Souths going from minor premiers in 1989, to wooden spooners in 1990?
 
jamesgould said:
Reckon he’d have been binned for sure for the hair pull if they didn’t already have a player in the bin. I know it’s probably not right, but I get why they don’t like reducing teams to 11 men.
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Yeah I reckon that's why he got away with it. It just annoyed me as it was Hudson young and I don't like how he goes about his footy. Felt for savage with his ankle, it didn't look good on the big screen.
 
Reading the earlier pages of this thread, I was like I must've of been watching a different game live to the one being portrayed in here🤣
 
just rewatching as was working for most of it.

I was just at a point, almost admiring Hudson Young. Thinking he has a bit of mongrel about him. Charging at every kick etc.

Then he pulls Dom’s hair. Quickly changed my tune. Embarrassing. Still prone to crossing the line.

Something I was pleased to see though, was McEwen rushing in immediately to go at Hudson. I’ve been a bit critical over the years of us ‘not having eachother’s backs’ in some circumstances.

But that was pure instinct to defend your teammate, hopefully a sign of the comraderie present and belief they have.
 
Im concerned going into our next game not having Best. Best is a very good defender and covers Marzhews *** more times than not, so if he is out who ever is the fill in will really have to lift in defence.
 
bremsstrahlung said:
just rewatching as was working for most of it.

I was just at a point, almost admiring Hudson Young. Thinking he has a bit of mongrel about him. Charging at every kick etc.

Then he pulls Dom’s hair. Quickly changed my tune. Embarrassing. Still prone to crossing the line.

Something I was pleased to see though, was McEwen rushing in immediately to go at Hudson. I’ve been a bit critical over the years of us ‘not having eachother’s backs’ in some circumstances.

But that was pure instinct to defend your teammate, hopefully a sign of the comraderie present and belief they have.
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I have nothing but contempt for him and have for years. Biggest fake tough guy going. Hair pulling and eye gouging is a lot of his game. Put a dog shot on Sandon at the end of the game, yeah he’s a real tough guy once the sting has gone out of the game and they’ve already lost by 20 isn’t he.

He is the absolute king of letting everyone know how hard he is but not doing the actual unglamorous tough guy stuff we’re getting from guys like Phoenix, Dyl Lucas and young Jermaine. I hate players like him and I’m ecstatic he’ll never play in the NRL for us.
 
jamesgould said:
I know people are annoyed at the commentators pointing out our losing streak at home. Well it was definitely worthy of being a big talking point for me. So how good was it to see and hear the crowd going bananas and the Newcastle chant going up! That final try to Don was just total 2023 vibes.

As for Canberra, I wonder if they’re starting to nervously contemplate Souths going from minor premiers in 1989, to wooden spooners in 1990?
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Yeah I don’t understand the rage at the comms about this stuff in particular. If we keep playing like this the pats on the back will be coming. It’s just a fact that we were dire last year.
 
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