NRL Round 8 - Knights Vs Panthers - 2:00pm Sunday, 26st April - McDonald Jones Stadium

I think the honeymoon is over and reality has arrived for Holbrook. He’s got some work to do.
I rated him at the Titans and I think he can do something with us, but **** me, the road will be as bumpy as a QLD highway for a while I feel
 
listo said:
I think the honeymoon is over and reality has arrived for Holbrook. He’s got some work to do.
I rated him at the Titans and I think he can do something with us, but **** me, the road will be as bumpy as a QLD highway for a while I feel
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It was a very underwhelming performance , even allowing for he "outs " Anzac Day at home , full house .
 
mozza said:
One saving grace is our losses have been to the sides coming 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th. And of course we play the 4th placed Bunnies next week. But after that there’s plenty of winnable games and we’ll get a bunch of players back.
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Yep, this is it. The expectation is to beat the teams you should, compete with teams on your level and be forgiven for losses against sides above you.

Hard to keep that with 6 cup players in the squad and missing your best defenders and best strike player.

I know people are slashing at the moment after this loss, but really we will get players back and we will get back to good footy and getting the wins back flowing again. Just a rough period at the moment.
 
Squad depth is a bit of a problem but those cup players will be better for the run. Having 1 or 2 players out here or there I think we can cope but 6 was to much to overcome. Particularly against the best team.

Out of the backups, I rate Hunt even though he had a tough game. I think Manu will take over from Cant as first forward reserve. Hopwood fringe.

We are lacking 1 or 2 solid forwards. The club should try and keep Frizz if they can.
 
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Whilst I’m thrilled to have some players back and they will improve us immensely not just in talent but also in mindset. I’m more disappointed in last 3 weeks of how much our middles are getting mUked and we aren’t controlling the ruck like we did in first few games l, against solid opposition too.

Our forwards contact had been terrible through the middle and don’t seem up for the fight to do the hard work so we can win the field position.

We’ve only missed Frizell and Lucas and Frizz is a middle forward. So reality is Jsaf, Saulo, Mooney have really dropped the ball. The only middle I can give love too is Croker who keeps making PCM and great contact through the middle.

Definitely a mental reset required this week with fast line speed and strong contact required.
I was initially confident against South but we have to defend the yardage much much better and ball control if we’re to be a chance.
 
JOJO82 said:
The thing for me is losses were always going to happen especially with so many outs, but it's the way we have lost that hurts the most.

If you lose so be it but we have been absolutely pumped the past few weeks, errors after errors also.....at least show some fight and make the games closer.
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That’s the NRL this season, if you lose, you lose big. Very few close games … and there’s no way we were ever going to keep it close if Penrith got on a roll, imo.
 
We played a team yesterday who's basic game plan through winning four grand finals is to make the opposition middles and big men so fatigued they are irrelevant and targets if the game is on the line late. Best example is the 2024 grand final where Tui Kamikamica was so exhausted after 17 minutes that he couldn't come back on the field. Penrith won that game 14-6 on paper but realistically the Storm were never a chance in the second half.

We lost that game before the first try was scored yesterday. About ten minutes in I said to my daughter "I'm not enjoying this, I want to go home". Error after error after error and just watching Cleary working us over drained any confidence from me. We had periods of the game later where we competed pretty well set for set. But the Panthers were always well in control.
 
Owey said:
We played a team yesterday who's basic game plan through winning four grand finals is to make the opposition middles and big men so fatigued they are irrelevant and targets if the game is on the line late. Best example is the 2024 grand final where Tui Kamikamica was so exhausted after 17 minutes that he couldn't come back on the field. Penrith won that game 14-6 on paper but realistically the Storm were never a chance in the second half.
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That grand final win maybe usurps 2012 (Storm 14 Bulldogs 4) as the best ever example of perfect gameplanning and execution. That was Penrith with all their cheat code/X factor guys finally taken away (and Stephen Crichton in particular was a huge part of why they won 2021 and 2023), and they were just relentless in their combination of physicality in D and relentless working over their middle with the ball. Past a certain point, none of Melbourne's forwards are getting back onside before tackle 4 or 5 in yardage, no one is running decoys, no one is in support... they were dying out there.

It's going to stand out more and more in coming years, you really don't see that many super low scoring finals games these days. And keeping that particular Melbourne team to 6 is crazy, they were sleepwalking to 40+ all season. IMO the Storm actually played better in 2024 than in the 2025 GF.
 
Owey said:
We lost that game before the first try was scored yesterday. About ten minutes in I said to my daughter "I'm not enjoying this, I want to go home"
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Yeah around the 14th minute just before Edwards scored his second try the entire team was walking. 14 minutes in.

Someone in this thread said it was good we'd held the panthers out for so long, I was thinking the opposite. Maybe in the current game it's actually better letting them score to have a chance to reset.

BTP said:
So reality is Jsaf, Saulo, Mooney have really dropped the ball. The only middle I can give love too is Croker who keeps making PCM and great contact through the middle.
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Poor JSaf is looking tired, Holbrook has fallen into the trap of playing him long minutes because the rest of the middles are as hard as custard at the moment. 65 minutes raiders, 63 tigers, 66 roosters.
 
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Owey said:
We played a team yesterday who's basic game plan through winning four grand finals is to make the opposition middles and big men so fatigued they are irrelevant and targets if the game is on the line late. Best example is the 2024 grand final where Tui Kamikamica was so exhausted after 17 minutes that he couldn't come back on the field. Penrith won that game 14-6 on paper but realistically the Storm were never a chance in the second half.

We lost that game before the first try was scored yesterday. About ten minutes in I said to my daughter "I'm not enjoying this, I want to go home". Error after error after error and just watching Cleary working us over drained any confidence from me. We had periods of the game later where we competed pretty well set for set. But the Panthers were always well in control.
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Yep we were on the back foot from the start , seemed like we spent the first 15 minutes on our line You knew it wasn't going to be our day . Credit to Penrith they are very well drilled in all aspects of the game . Hopefully we are at level one day ( soon)
 
danknights said:
I just watched the game and I didn't think so. I did notice the ref giving a big 10 metres to Penrith. Knight were always 12 metres back which is pretty crazy. First contact was tough I thought, just too many errors in good ball led to where we ended up. It took an effort play from pheens and an individual effort from dylbro to get tries on the board. Penrith are definitely beatable if you can keep the ball in possession and play down their end. None of which we did today.
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Lol ok sure, aside from a big 10 metres for the Panthers and errors, the Knights were completely physically on top of them.

I’d argue the Panthers could’ve been held back 15 metres and the result would still be mostly the same. Maybe they would’ve had to get out of 2nd gear
 
NotTheSpooners2026 said:
Def not the ref, we were physically bashed in every part of the game
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Yeah I didn't think so when I watched it if I'm honest. Our errors in red zone really cemented penriths first 30 minutes. Even if we did that to say the titans it's probably the same outcome. Maybe just not as many points. I thought they defended quite well until about minute 50 when fatigue really set in.
 
The stuff to fix up over the off-season was ball in hand, game awareness, mentality. We've made big steps.

Hopefully we can finish 5th/6th, get a finals win. That would be a lot of progress in one year.

The next step is an off season where our blokes get absolutely caned fitness-wise. Players will buy into that extra intensity if they feel good about where they might go as a result. That was the main thing Madge did when he got to Brisbane because there was nothing wrong about how they were playing philosophically given the roster, he changed nothing there, about their attack and all that. They just needed to level up as competitors.

I'm optimistic that a lot of our guys have a lot of growth to go still.
 
Newygirl said:
Lol ok sure, aside from a big 10 metres for the Panthers and errors, the Knights were completely physically on top of them.

I’d argue the Panthers could’ve been held back 15 metres and the result would still be mostly the same. Maybe they would’ve had to get out of 2nd gear
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Panthers were definitely not in 2nd gear. They started producing fatigue errors late in the game. Knights just couldn't keep producing effort plays without an error.
 
danknights said:
Yeah I didn't think so when I watched it if I'm honest. Our errors in red zone really cemented penriths first 30 minutes. Even if we did that to say the titans it's probably the same outcome. Maybe just not as many points. I thought they defended quite well until about minute 50 when fatigue really set in.
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I agree, we came out and handed the game to the Panthers and continued to do so the entire game.

Spent the first 20 minutes getting tackling practice which gasses you for most of the game from there on. Our errors continued though and it was where we made those errors that ruined the game for us, most of them in our half, again, handing fantastic field position to the Panthers.

If we could complete sets and get in to the grind with them, the few times all game we did that we looked ok against them, made line breaks, scored points. Just you can't expect to be competitive against anybody when you continually hand the ball over to the opposition in your half and the opposition doesn't ever really get under pressure. Even when we did get chances down there end, we dropped the ball or made an error.

I don't know what people expect when you play this way other than to be soundly defeated.

You can forget praising how Penrith played as of course they looked good, it was an attacking training run for them.
 
slotmachine said:
Someone in this thread said it was good we'd held the panthers out for so long, I was thinking the opposite. Maybe in the current game it's actually better letting them score to have a chance to reset.
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I get what you’re saying, defend 2 sets but not 3 because you’ll too gassed to do anything else.

As @Owey said, it’s such an indictment on where the game is at that this is even being discussed. It goes against the whole idea of professional sports

On the other hand, if a team had the guts do it for a game, to make a point, you could probably get rid of the 6 Agains very quickly. It would be a quick way to show the absurdity of it
 
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