Lynchyknight
Darren Albert
WAs first game in awhile Ponga didn’t have his knee strapped
NRL Round 26 - Knights Vs Warriors - 2:00pm Sunday, 30th of August - Go Media Stadium
- Thread starter jamesgould
- Start date
So Warriors supporter here, just wanted to sign up and commend you guys. Thought you were dominating early and were still in the game even with a player sent off. Shout out to your forward pack, your edges Manuleleua and McEwen also look super damaging, and a special mention to Fletcher Hunt, what a footy player.
Best of luck in the playoffs, I think you guys can definitely give it a good crack!
Best of luck in the playoffs, I think you guys can definitely give it a good crack!
Roundtable
Jamie Ainscough
Thought the guys were great today. J.Saf was great early. Hope he doesnt get suspended.
Watching the highlights, two of the first three Warriors tries were some pretty poor efforts from Croker. First one (Wahs second try), he fails to even make an effort to get up off the floor, leaving a clear gap on the line for Egan to stroll over. The next try, it was a poor attempt of a tackle on Clark.
I'm not sure the Roosters can afford to rest everyone; that could mean they're heading into the finals off 3 losses and without bedding down a new halves combo.
I think to win the title, they need to take the Souths game seriously. Obviously a bit of hopeium, I guess we'll know more when teams come out.
I think to win the title, they need to take the Souths game seriously. Obviously a bit of hopeium, I guess we'll know more when teams come out.
Frank McWilliams
Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
Didn’t actually take note but did Ponga take kick offs during game, which meant quite a few based on score line.
Why then doesn’t he kick for goal, even if shared with Smith, Ponga from right and Snith from left, seems preferred sides.
Alex
Ben Kennedy
He will 100% be suspended... Rightly so too.
bremsstrahlung
Mark Sargent
Mixed feelings about that game.
I know it was an understrength Warriors team, but I thought we did really well against them, and frankly so were we.
Going into the game, I thought their pack would be too strong for us and just wear us down and go through the middle to beat us.
I was impressed that we took it to them, we got some momentum and they couldn’t stop us. We looked like we were a chance at putting 50 on them in Wah-ville.
It seemed like the message was potentially go guns blazing, we have a week off, but let’s set the platform now.
send off - nobody more disappointed than Saf right now. Off with injury. And now back - even meant to play NSW CUP semi next weekend, an unconventionally play the NSW CUP 2nd week of finals before our semi final (right…?!?!). Had the intention to dominate them physically and didn’t hold back. Anyway, might post up my criminal defence for Safs later.
I thought the game was done, and in reality it was, but nobody told them that. They tried and tried and tried. On another day, the bounce goes our way for a few of those and we come away with the points.
We’ve had a lot of games in the balance this year - lucky wins, lucky losses - if we can take the luck out of it in the coming years - that’s top 4.
Hunt - same story, we know what we get, 100% heart, some classy moments, some immature moments - the whole team is guilty of this.
I know it’s not a switch you can switch on and off, or at least it isn’t at the moment. But the Hail Mary plays are celebrated when they come off - we’d have to have the best attack outside the “westpac Harvey Normal AAMI Telstra Red Zone” so we don’t score half those if we aren’t always chancing our arm.
I think Holbrooks challenge is to get some game awareness into them, and perhaps rely on the senior players to call “sensible” sets. We all see the 1 finger go up when somebody concedes possession - “one set of defence here, switch on”. We almost need a “1 sensible set here, hold the ball, no rubbish, hard carries, get to our kick, up as a line, defend the set, restart”. But you don’t want to tarnish the attacking mindset too much.
Thought Ponga, Croker, Best had chill games. Hard to read much into it being a man down with extra workload.
Ponga didn’t involve himself very much at all in the opening 15 minutes. But I did note his defensive efforts getting into the line once they got past halfway. His tackle technique is horrible for a fullback though haha. When they had a break he almost just threw his body in front like a hurdle rather than make a tackling motion. In the scheme of things, I can forgive him not putting his body 100% on the line yesterday.
Disappointing injury to Manu. Best missed 6 weeks with his Elbow dislocation. A return this season seems unlikely.
Marzhew impressive.
Anyway, disappointing to lose Francis and Safs. But proud of the effort we showed. There’s definitely an old habit to write them off after some setbacks like that, but I think it says a lot about what we are building that they competed and were in the game for 75 minutes despite the adversity. Good signs for the future.
I know it was an understrength Warriors team, but I thought we did really well against them, and frankly so were we.
Going into the game, I thought their pack would be too strong for us and just wear us down and go through the middle to beat us.
I was impressed that we took it to them, we got some momentum and they couldn’t stop us. We looked like we were a chance at putting 50 on them in Wah-ville.
It seemed like the message was potentially go guns blazing, we have a week off, but let’s set the platform now.
send off - nobody more disappointed than Saf right now. Off with injury. And now back - even meant to play NSW CUP semi next weekend, an unconventionally play the NSW CUP 2nd week of finals before our semi final (right…?!?!). Had the intention to dominate them physically and didn’t hold back. Anyway, might post up my criminal defence for Safs later.
I thought the game was done, and in reality it was, but nobody told them that. They tried and tried and tried. On another day, the bounce goes our way for a few of those and we come away with the points.
We’ve had a lot of games in the balance this year - lucky wins, lucky losses - if we can take the luck out of it in the coming years - that’s top 4.
Hunt - same story, we know what we get, 100% heart, some classy moments, some immature moments - the whole team is guilty of this.
I know it’s not a switch you can switch on and off, or at least it isn’t at the moment. But the Hail Mary plays are celebrated when they come off - we’d have to have the best attack outside the “westpac Harvey Normal AAMI Telstra Red Zone” so we don’t score half those if we aren’t always chancing our arm.
I think Holbrooks challenge is to get some game awareness into them, and perhaps rely on the senior players to call “sensible” sets. We all see the 1 finger go up when somebody concedes possession - “one set of defence here, switch on”. We almost need a “1 sensible set here, hold the ball, no rubbish, hard carries, get to our kick, up as a line, defend the set, restart”. But you don’t want to tarnish the attacking mindset too much.
Thought Ponga, Croker, Best had chill games. Hard to read much into it being a man down with extra workload.
Ponga didn’t involve himself very much at all in the opening 15 minutes. But I did note his defensive efforts getting into the line once they got past halfway. His tackle technique is horrible for a fullback though haha. When they had a break he almost just threw his body in front like a hurdle rather than make a tackling motion. In the scheme of things, I can forgive him not putting his body 100% on the line yesterday.
Disappointing injury to Manu. Best missed 6 weeks with his Elbow dislocation. A return this season seems unlikely.
Marzhew impressive.
Anyway, disappointing to lose Francis and Safs. But proud of the effort we showed. There’s definitely an old habit to write them off after some setbacks like that, but I think it says a lot about what we are building that they competed and were in the game for 75 minutes despite the adversity. Good signs for the future.
bremsstrahlung
Mark Sargent
Brem’s video analysis - cooked takes, but with photographic support.
Safs - Suali’i got 4 weeks for his effort. Think Safs is looking at a similar charge sheet.
However, I’d like to argue some mitigating factors to bring that down (to 3.9 games…) .
Warriors player is reaching and trying to juggle the forward pass. Play should have been called dead before the contact*.
Player makes no effort to brace for contact*.
In all seriousness, the player changes his head position in a split second.
See images - Use Croker as a reference. As Saifiti launches - players shoulder is at level of Crokers NRL patch on his chest. Warriors player then drops his head while trying to control the ball - his head is now in the target zone where his shoulder was. His shoulder now almost below the NIB logo. And we all know how huge that is.
FWIW, he had to be sent off. But, I think there’s potentially some mitigating factors here. But NRL will need to uphold a hefty ban as all the media outlets have branded it horrible and catastrophic etc.
* not all serious points…
Safs - Suali’i got 4 weeks for his effort. Think Safs is looking at a similar charge sheet.
However, I’d like to argue some mitigating factors to bring that down (to 3.9 games…) .
Warriors player is reaching and trying to juggle the forward pass. Play should have been called dead before the contact*.
Player makes no effort to brace for contact*.
In all seriousness, the player changes his head position in a split second.
See images - Use Croker as a reference. As Saifiti launches - players shoulder is at level of Crokers NRL patch on his chest. Warriors player then drops his head while trying to control the ball - his head is now in the target zone where his shoulder was. His shoulder now almost below the NIB logo. And we all know how huge that is.
FWIW, he had to be sent off. But, I think there’s potentially some mitigating factors here. But NRL will need to uphold a hefty ban as all the media outlets have branded it horrible and catastrophic etc.
* not all serious points…
Attachments
Another one come over to give you guys your chocolates.
Much respect for exposing our D.
For not capitulating. I would have understood. I'm a Warriors fan.
Outside looking in shows huge upswing for your team.
Of limited observation I rate Hunt over Sharp of the two mullets.
On slightly different angle. My favourite Knights players were Sam Stewart and John Schuster. I followed Schuster over from his rugby days to his transition to you blokes.
frankLauda
Matthew Gidley
It’s disappointing Jsaf’s discretion yesterday because our young forwards need the senior guys support out there on the field. It puts extra pressure on them.
Jsaf has done that a few times this year, shooting out the line, and had hit the target, it’s a great hit. But the risk, reward needs to be considered. I think he needs to dial it back a tad from his game. “Reduce your force”??
Jsaf has done that a few times this year, shooting out the line, and had hit the target, it’s a great hit. But the risk, reward needs to be considered. I think he needs to dial it back a tad from his game. “Reduce your force”??
Went through a whole lot of emotions from that game.
I’ll settle with this opinion of this game and this year in general. This is the base level of this teams ability and it’s year one with Holbrook and staff, the level of talent the boys showed this year and even in this game with so many out has blown me away.
All this without KP training in off season, sharpe being half his ability for half the year, Bradman playing half a season and Dylbro and DylLucas gone for 1/2 the season too.
The emergence of Francis, Mooney, Hopwood, Crouch, Hunt has made injuries less impactful.
It’ll be nice to win week one of the finals, obviously it’s doable- the team wreaks of 2001 squads where we had incredible attack, but also got. Whacked a few times a year and some very high scoring games.
Either way, it’s going to be one exciting offseason with the potential of the squad and another pre season together. Figure out contract for Best and Dom. Keep Hunt. Progress Winter and Hagan, give Elijah Salesea more game time next year.
Final note. Junior squads going to be incredible to watch next year from AJ’s to SG all of them could win it.
I’m not giving up on this year, the team is good enough to ruffle some feathers and bunnies fur in finals. I’m just genuinely blown away by teams resilience yesterday and ability to keep pushing the premiership favs and so keen for the future.
I’ll settle with this opinion of this game and this year in general. This is the base level of this teams ability and it’s year one with Holbrook and staff, the level of talent the boys showed this year and even in this game with so many out has blown me away.
All this without KP training in off season, sharpe being half his ability for half the year, Bradman playing half a season and Dylbro and DylLucas gone for 1/2 the season too.
The emergence of Francis, Mooney, Hopwood, Crouch, Hunt has made injuries less impactful.
It’ll be nice to win week one of the finals, obviously it’s doable- the team wreaks of 2001 squads where we had incredible attack, but also got. Whacked a few times a year and some very high scoring games.
Either way, it’s going to be one exciting offseason with the potential of the squad and another pre season together. Figure out contract for Best and Dom. Keep Hunt. Progress Winter and Hagan, give Elijah Salesea more game time next year.
Final note. Junior squads going to be incredible to watch next year from AJ’s to SG all of them could win it.
I’m not giving up on this year, the team is good enough to ruffle some feathers and bunnies fur in finals. I’m just genuinely blown away by teams resilience yesterday and ability to keep pushing the premiership favs and so keen for the future.
HarVeeGee13
Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
Would recommend a little more observation then hahaha. Sharpe may very well be the consensus best five-eighth in the game as early as next season.
101k
Marc Glanville
Expecting a 2024 finals week one Ponga to make an appearance in two weeks.
Souths loss and cowboys win for a home final against the cows would feed.
This time my glorious king will ice the left to right pass to gagai where gags will streak away for the game winning try in his last game at home.
Now wouldn’t that be cinema.
As I said at the time, I thought there were mitigating circumstances...particularly around head height and initial contact glancing off the shoulder...and that if the player had got back up (and I'm not suggesting he should have) rather than been knocked cold it would have been a sinbin, unfortunately the NRL's long history of judging the crime by the outcome not the act will mean Saf gets a the book thrown at him.
Roundtable
Jamie Ainscough
Shu was one of our first really dangerous attacking players
He was a great second five in rugby and was one of the first All Blacks to come over to league. Think it was still Winfield cup then. Craig Innes who was another great All Black centre went to Manly too. Matthew Ridge who wasn't a fringe All Black too
Growing up in NZ, Winfield cup was never on our TV's until one sunny Sunday afternoon a grand final between Balmain and Canberra was shown and I was hooked.
We had no Warriors back then so Newy had Stewart, then later Schuster. So I followed you blokes. But any team that had New Zealand players got my support too.
Niukore had that in him where he copped tons of demerits and fines and suspensions for that style of play. He had to dial it way back to stay on the field.