NRL Round 14 - Knights Vs Storm - 6:00pm Friday, 5th of June - AAMI Park

HarVeeGee13 said:
We saw how important Phoenix is, he tidies up so much through the middle, and his service out of dummy half is so underrated because he doesn’t have the aesthetics people want in a 9. He throws a beautiful long ball out of dummy half though.
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Not only that, losing Graham as an impact player hurt as well. Love what Graham brings but he’s a very different player and skillset to Crossland.
Anyone know what’s going on with Matty Arthur? Is he still in the country…
 
Tough loss. We were the better team overall. Klein got the result he wanted. Regardless we aimed up big time. Take out Klein’s 12 point turnover we win relatively easy.

Under a proper spotlight we beat 15 or 16 teams in the comp, no doubt if Penrith got fingered time after time by the refs they wouldn’t get the win. It’s probably our best effort of the season to be honest.
 
We are still very much in the hunt for 4th position. But even if we drop out of the 4 at the end of the year, making the finals this year would be a massive improvement after what happened last year.

Having said that, even if we somehow creep into the 4, I do get the feeling we will be making up the numbers. We might have Ferraris in the backline, but we are clearly still a middle forward (or two) short of the other top 4 sides. Massively losing the territory and possession battle tonight (56-44 tonight) didn't prevent us from almost beating Melbourne because of our long-range line breaks. But Melbourne are no longer the benchmark and have been defensively frail on the edges all year.

Our current style of play is just not going to work against bigger, more powerful sides like Penrith or the Wahs who are so good at dominating the ruck and limiting time and space for opposition playmakers. The physicality in that Panthers-Wahs game last week is next level compared to what we dished up tonight defensively.
 
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Correct. At this stage Panthers and Warriors are easily the two best sides. I really can’t see anyone beating the Panthers this year. They beat the Wahs without there 3 best players.

I actually think we defended well with the amount of possession Melbourne had in the first half particularly in our half. That would have gassed us that second half and we let in some soft tries.

But there is no doubt we are building and I agree with Holbrook that we will be one side with the most improvement come the end of the year. Next year we will have Nikora, and I’m hopeful a Hopwood or Manu are playing regular FG. McEwen is slowly becoming a gun second rower.

We may not win it this year but the signs are definitely there we are a quality top side. I think we beat the Dragons again pretty easy, and the Tigers. I rate the Dolphins.

Remember we had a lot of keys players out those loses to the Wahs, Penrith and Tigers.
 
alrighty, slept on that one.

Firstly, just gonna get it out of the way. Referee. I’ll get to the Crossland stuff later - I think this moment got us frustrated from the out. I think Klein was determined to referee that game differently - more like an origin/finals game - but not quite the free flowing game we want. Storm were back to getting away with murder in the ruck and dark arts. I don’t think we adjusted. Munster changed the game - I think he fired up his team and I think we let the pressure of that game get to us. There were a lot of 50/50 things that went storm way - even the bounce of the ball. It was frustrating. I sometimes wish that we tried to manage the referee a little bit better - not quite to the level of Munster, Grant and Hughes (I don’t think that’s a good look). I think we did ourselves proud, and I think the wider NRL community was on our side for this one.

ERRORS. You can’t expect to win a game with 16 to 5 error count. I’m okay with us making errors trying to shift the ball and make the most of overlaps. We have to expect a few with the type of footy we are trying to play. But there’s times when we really lack composure. After the flash point of Munsters push on Ponga. That set after would determine the game - bit dramatic, but honestly, if we score there or keep the pressure up, I think they crumble. They end up frustrated. Instead, we cough it up forcing a play on tackle 2 or 3. They make yardage. Then we end the next set on their 40 without getting to our kick. That’s a massive boost for them. We were our own worst enemies last night.


Our attack is great. We look dangerous. We look like we can score points from anywhere. It’s great to see. Even in a game with 16 errors we put on 30 points against the Storm in Melbourne.

Losing Crossland was big for us. He’s great in defence and such an integral part of our team. It was kind of good to see how we go without him, because I do think we take him for granted a little bit. I do think it was an accident. I don’t think Chan intentionally sought to knock him out. BUT, when does intention come into things? Mitigating circumstances is for judiciary, is what we hear. I said it at the time, Chan is the decoy, he’s the one initiating the contact, it’s his responsibility to go through the line, to hit inside shoulder, to not take out a defender. On face value, it’s a penalty for taking out a defender. If Crossland does that to Chan - initiates the contact it’s a clear penalty. With the contact to head, he’d binned at least. I can’t really fathom how we didn’t anything from that except a player in hospital. Again, I get it, it’s a bit of an accident. But Chan has a responsibility as a decoy runner.

Overall, I think it shows how exciting this team is, and what potential they have, that we are incredibly disappointed/frustrated at losing to Melbourne in Melbourne. We were absolutely a chance at winning that game. Hopefully there is a few coachable moments in that game that we can improve on. Perhaps a loss is good at this time. Helps us reset, refocus and not read our own press.
 
frankLauda said:
Correct. At this stage Panthers and Warriors are easily the two best sides. I really can’t see anyone beating the Panthers this year. They beat the Wahs without there 3 best players.

I actually think we defended well with the amount of possession Melbourne had in the first half particularly in our half. That would have gassed us that second half and we let in some soft tries.

But there is no doubt we are building and I agree with Holbrook that we will be one side with the most improvement come the end of the year. Next year we will have Nikora, and I’m hopeful a Hopwood or Manu are playing regular FG. McEwen is slowly becoming a gun second rower.

We may not win it this year but the signs are definitely there we are a quality top side. I think we beat the Dragons again pretty easy, and the Tigers. I rate the Dolphins.

Remember we had a lot of keys players out those loses to the Wahs, Penrith and Tigers.
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Problem with us and the tigers is how much of a gap there is between our best 17 and depth. Look at how the tigers turn to custard when one of their spine players get injured- they go from a top 8 team to bottom 4 pretty quickly. At least we won a couple of games without KP but the problem remains given his injury history. If he goes down again, we're going to not only crash out of the 4 but also out of the 8 as we did earlier this year.

Compare that to the Wahs and Penrith. TBF to the wahs, they didn't have anywhere near their A team last weekend. They seem to be on their third string halfback, 2nd string fullback, third string center pairing and were without their origin forwards. Penrith without Cleary, Yeo and To'o. Yet despite that, that game last week was played at such an intensity that both these 'B' teams would still probably smoke us comfortably.

Maybe this is just a function of our attack being entirely built around our marquee players in KP and Brown whereas these top teams are more systems based. So even if they lose a halfback or two, it doesn't mean as much to them as if we lose one of KP/Brown. Either way, we need to address this: Tyson/Sandon aren't really up to it as depth as far as I'm concerned.
 
I don't know whether the conclusion should be that the Storm are really bad or we are really good, but we nearly beat those guys despite everything going wrong for us.
We can improve in every area, but most of all, just luck. The early injury to a key player and the ball bouncing against us time after time made it just one of those games you lose, but Storm just snuck home despite 60-40 possession in the first half and a heap of lucky bounces of the ball.
Storm won't make the 8.
We'll get a lot better than that.
 
Braddy plays we win that game easily. Hold the ball for 15mins we win by 2 tries minimum.

Frustrating loss but great attack for sure. As other said, errors come with the attack we're playing but KP's mistakes killed the game for us, he's been erratic lately and needs rain it in a bit and let Dyl feed him good ball.

Fletch hunt is a great young talent, but I still think he's no more than a quality winger. His defence and ball skill at centre isn't there and it's where we need Braddy to have better injury resistance and Winter to continue his growth for me will be the direct replacement for Gags next year. He has strong defence and great skillset to be his man and set up wingers with offloads or the bat on from a sweep play.

Either way, Well done to Storm for finally holding onto the ball, losing by two and almost winning the game with a 90%-70% diff in completion is good signs.

Just need to defend those errors better, or make less.
 
jamesgould said:
I think our draw towards the end of the year might be a bit too tricky. But I really hope we are aiming for the top four, we should be.

Tonight really had the intensity and vibe of a pretty big finals match, imo.
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The match definitely had finals vibes.

Tough draw but I don't think there's ever a easy game in the NRL. Three straight home games though which imo are all games we are capable of winning.
 
The injury to Crossland was very early in game ruling out top tackler and 80min player.
Upsets our normal system of resting Croker with Graham on for 30 or so rather than much longer minutes.
It virtually reduced us to more pressure across the team and with that pressure comes the errors
 
bremsstrahlung said:
I don’t think Chan intentionally sought to knock him out. BUT, when does intention come into things? Mitigating circumstances is for judiciary, is what we hear. I said it at the time, Chan is the decoy, he’s the one initiating the contact, it’s his responsibility to go through the line, to hit inside shoulder, to not take out a defender. On face value, it’s a penalty for taking out a defender. If Crossland does that to Chan - initiates the contact it’s a clear penalty. With the contact to head, he’d binned at least. I can’t really fathom how we didn’t anything from that except a player in hospital. Again, I get it, it’s a bit of an accident. But Chan has a responsibility as a decoy runner.
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This
 
BTP said:
Fletch hunt is a great young talent, but I still think he's no more than a quality winger. His defence and ball skill at centre isn't there and it's where we need Braddy to have better injury resistance and Winter to continue his growth for me will be the direct replacement for Gags next year.
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Can you remember Braddy when he first came into first grade? Hunt is at least comparable with his speed and running power to where Best was, but his defence is degrees better then where Braddy's was. Braddy has developed in to a top defensive centre with experience, Hunt's instincts are already pretty good. And Best's hands were not that great either. There were numerous times Best butchered chances like the first try Hunt iced last night. We have a good player in Hunt, where ever he ends up playing.
 
I watched the game with a couple Storm Fans over here in Bali, they were blowing up at the Ref almost as much as I was. Couple of big take aways from that game, that was our first real night game, Vagas was in an enclosed Stadium with aircon, so no dew, whereas last night was the first time the boys played in dewy conditions, which might have led to a few of the handling errors. The errors cost us the game, I don't mind the Ponga to Marz pass, the play was on, just didn't work, I can handle those type of errors, what drives me nuts is dropping the ball in hit ups and that double movement was just stupid.

Our spine is still getting used to each other, hardly had an off season to work on combinations and everyone always says it takes time to build on them. Here we are halfway through the season and we have gone from dead last to top 8, even top 4 contenders. Imagine how good we can be when they all click together. I feel this year was always going to be a building year and in that regard we are well ahead of schedule, nobody but really die hard supporters had us in the top 8, most had us running bottom 4 or even spooners again.

I actually wish we didn't have the bye this week so we could smash up someone, now we have to wait 2 weeks and it is a free to air game, guess Nine will be hoping that the Dargons who beat Broncos turn up, but I don't think it will matter, we should have Best back and that would have been all we needed last night to win against a very experienced Melbourne team, in Melbourne.

My wife, a Tigers fan, said the game was very even throughout and she thoroughly enjoyed all the attack from both sides and said that our team compared to last year is so different, she refused to watch any of the games late in the season cause we were soooooo sxxx, and hearing me screaming at the screen for all our stupid numpty plays lol. This year she says we are one of the best teams to watch as we are playing really great attacking plays.

I think we can go on a run now, If we can with the next 3 at home, I thnk we can take that confidence into the Bunnies and Sharks away games and hopefully we can prove we are a side that should be feared. Anyway, just my 2 cents worth.
 
Owey said:
Can you remember Braddy when he first came into first grade? Hunt is at least comparable with his speed and running power to where Best was, but his defence is degrees better then where Braddy's was. Braddy has developed in to a top defensive centre with experience, Hunt's instincts are already pretty good. And Best's hands were not that great either. There were numerous times Best butchered chances like the first try Hunt iced last night. We have a good player in Hunt, where ever he ends up playing.
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I was trying to think back to Best’s early days last night after the game. Found it really tough to remember for some reason, probably because he’s so reliable now! But you’re right, I’d totally forgotten some of the bad options he used to take in attack, and his defensive frailties.

I find we often talk up juniors to some crazy degree, then give them absolutely no leeway to develop when they reach first grade, and throw them on the scrapheap too soon. Hunt a good example of a player with a heap of upside who is still learning the game.

Players develop, learn, grow over their time in first grade. I think we’ve even seen it with all the members of our spine this year, and they’re no spring chickens.

Personally it’s one thing I love to watch over the years, in all sport, really.
 
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