Finals Week 1 vs Rabbitohs - 7:50pm Friday 11th of September - Allianz Stadium

Billy said:
We have Ponga.
Sometimes that's all we need - but his form recently hasn't filled me with hope.
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He’s had two weeks to kick his own arse which he no doubt has. If anything is extremely odd it’s seeing Ponga put two bad games together and he’s had a few. If his history has taught us anything it’s that come Friday he might just be the most dangerous guy on the field. Sharpe in support and a few others in on the plan and they can blow any team apart, but they have to all be humming. Throw in Trel and Walker who have the self control of a pair of bratty two year olds and their plan goes to pieces.
 
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slotmachine said:
We only got about 70 minutes from mooney, jsaf and francis against the warriors, played with 12 for the majority of the game and were still well in it with 5 minutes to go. 2 weeks off to rest up any niggles. Getting Friz, Dom and Crossland back. Knights by 2.
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Like a tennis match watch you being negative to positive! I'm all for it though ;) Knights by 2+ :P
 
TBF I don't think AOB "quit" on them mid-season, unless you think he masterminded the injuries to Sharpe, Ponga & Lucas, after which we didn't win another game. More like he responded to every problem by doubling down on stuff he believed in, his dour, conservative approach.

We've gone from a very hard-working but in some key ways flawed head coach to one who seems to be the perfect coach for the team we have and who right now I suspect is going to pan out to be the best coach in our history. You can bemoan all the time we "wasted" on AOB but the fact is that if we sacked him a few years earlier, like people say it was stupid not to do, we wouldn't have been in a position to get Holbrook, and we could have instead wasted more years on the likes of washed Des Hasler or myth Shane Flanagan. Who knows who would be head coach right now?

It's all worked out, it's better to be lucky than "good" or "smart", etc etc etc.
 
Bit harsh on Flanno the myth call, won the Sharks a premiership and he had nothing to coach at the Dragons besides some very green promising forwards.

Val and Gutho 3-4 years past it, and Atkinson and Flanno(The son.) never had it in the first place.
 
Definitely a fair few things that are big positives for us.

The performance where we kept pace with the Warriors despite being down to 12 and having a weakened pack - our gameplan really plays to our strengths anyway, all year we've been about spreading the ball and scoring points from anywhere, so that goes a long way to negating that weakness.

Souths have a 7 day turnaround, we've had a two week break. Anyone with niggles should be back close to 100%. Wouldn't be surprised to see the likes of Croker back to near his best, for example.

Souths have been up for two massive occasions, that could easily catch up with them.

Ponga, Sharpe, Best, Dom ... despite injuries we still have matchbreakers all over our backline. Only five times this year we've been held to under 20 points.

It won't be easy of course, but I'm pretty optimistic.
 
I think this game could go either way - …obviously.

I do think this would be a historical victory if we can get it done on Friday, with all the outs we have.

We shouldn’t really have had a chance in a lot of games we have played this year with injuries and key players out. Im struggling to recall a game where our best team played 80 together.

But, they surprise us. They work hard, for eachother and I think we’ve got some really solid foundations. What’s the saying? Champion team beats a team of champions?

I think we can hold our own against the Rabbits. Just can’t let Latrell get momentum - he thrives when they have the upper hand, but I don’t think they like to have to earn the upper hand very much.

We do need Ponga and Sharpe to have great games though. Ponga needs to lift. He’s been under the weather last few games - hopefully he’s up for this and he turns it on. I suspect he hasn’t been 100% so hopefully 2 weeks off, has helped him freshen up. I suspect he goes big this game. I hope so at least.

hopefully their training run against Roosters babies has helped inflate their ego a little. And if there’s an ego to inflate - many of them wear the red and green.

The biggest question - do we poke the bear that is Cody Walker? Bit of a 50/50 gamble if he goes to water or dials it back with some vintage performance and gets to laugh at us.
 
Just ****in go out there and smash those ****s hey. Ambush. Decent chance they'll show up already thinking about next week. Smash them early physically and every time you get anything which looks at all like good ball look to get Kalyn attacking the spaces in between Wighton, Sullivan and Fifita.

I thought the big mistake in the game we lost to them was how heavily we focused on attacking their left edge. Both our edges are huge strengths in attack, but IMO our left vs their right is a way bigger mismatch our way than our right vs their left.
 
Seano said:
I'm not sure this analogy helps you here. The argument isn't that bad sides can occasionally beat good sides in the NRL; of course, that can happen. It's that the Knights in 2025 had a side capable of more than 6 wins and losing TWICE to the rabble that were the Titans who should have won the spoon.

IDK why you think AOB needs defending; his team selections and his rigid adherence to his formulaic game plans towards the end made it clear he'd given up.
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Can't argue with that !
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Just ****in go out there and smash those ****s hey. Ambush. Decent chance they'll show up already thinking about next week. Smash them early physically and every time you get anything which looks at all like good ball look to get Kalyn attacking the spaces in between Wighton, Sullivan and Fifita.

I thought the big mistake in the game we lost to them was how heavily we focused on attacking their left edge. Both our edges are huge strengths in attack, but IMO our left vs their right is a way bigger mismatch our way than our right vs their left.
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back end of each half i think souths always look vulnerable through the middle (i hope holbrook was paying attention to brandon smiths efforts a "A" defender on friday night when the roosters hooker made that break).
I wanna see kp and sharpe pushing up through the middle.
Given latrells back i dont think we will be sending as much traffic that way this time round, last time it was more a case of going at the mismatch of dom and jye gray.
 
Seano said:
Play well, stick it to them, and let Cody's frustrations come out naturally.
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Are you forgetting Mitchell Pearce thought it would be a smart idea to rile up Cody the corresponding matcha few years ago? It was the dumbest things he’s ever done, and that’s an extremely long list.

I’d be staying t the hell away from antagonising either Cody or Latrell. If they’re going to do dumb stuff, let them but we should just concentrate on our own game.

Latrell almost beat us on his own last time he played. Firing either of those two up is the very last thing I’d be looking to do. I don’t think it would end well for us

Think the Knights should concentrate on what they do best and that’s playing very good attacking footy. Worry about beating them on the scoreboard because it’s the only place that matters
 
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That's what I'm saying. The longer we hang in this game that the Rabbits are expected to win comfortably, the more likely Cody or Trell will snap. I just hope the ref is there to make the right call and we don't get another Jai Arrow Day repeat.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
We've gone from a very hard-working but in some key ways flawed head coach to one who seems to be the perfect coach for the team we have and who right now I suspect is going to pan out to be the best coach in our history. You can bemoan all the time we "wasted" on AOB but the fact is that if we sacked him a few years earlier, like people say it was stupid not to do, we wouldn't have been in a position to get Holbrook, and we could have instead wasted more years on the likes of washed Des Hasler or myth Shane Flanagan. Who knows who would be head coach right now?

It's all worked out, it's better to be lucky than "good" or "smart", etc etc etc.
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Weren’t the Knights actually hoping to land Josh Hannay but he chose the Titans because he thought they had a better roster 😂

So in a way AOB made the Knights team look so bad that a coach was deluded into thinking that a roster that was going to have KP, Sharpe, Best, Young, Lucas, Brown, Saifiti etc was somehow worse than the Titans. It’s almost impressive

We have terrible injury luck but have had some good fortune when it comes to missing out on signings eg Hannah, Pezet, Leo, as well as the handful of awful signings Nathan Brown tried to make
 
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