Jacob Saifiti discussion

He done us proud tonight, I just wish I could see more of It at club level.

Matter of fact, the whole lot of them done us proud and honestly wish they can produce what they done week In week out for us.

If they played with this amount of heart we would be sitting In the top 4 and firing.

Almost couldn't have played better, Carrigan killed NSW all series and Jacob came out and completely dominated him during his stint steamrolling him multiple times.

Was dissapointing to see that trademark Saifiti lack of attention to detail come out with the PTB error but outside of that he was absolutely immense - best prop on the field.

Junior Paulo had him edged I thought.

Holbrook really knows what kind of player he has in J Saf. Jacob’s doing less but doing everything with more impact, running and hitting harder. And that does so much to set up the rest of the game plan.

AOB would have had Jacob play over 70 minutes yesterday given the troops which went down during the game, which would have blunted him and it would hurt the integrity of our middle defence. Justin’s answer was to ask for more from Croker and Saulo. Proof is in the pudding as to which answer is better.

Career highs prior to 2026:

Running metres: 118 per game (2024)
Tackle breaks: 1.26 per game (2021)

2026 averages:

Running metres: 121 per game
Tackle breaks: 2.25 per game

I'm not that bothered about tackle efficiency as a stat but that's also a career high, but by eye test the key thing is the physicality he's doing everything with at the moment. There's so much clarity now that Jacob's role is to assert himself on the contest, not solve every problem in defence and stick it out for long minutes, and we're reaping dividends. In fact, in the one game where our forwards comprehensively lost the arm wrestle, Holbrook's response was to *reduce* J Saf's minutes so he could still be effective in his role, rather than freak out about it and keep him out there way longer than he should, which I would guarantee is what AOB would have done.

And I think our willingness to spread the ball helps him so much. If the defensive line is heavily compressed to blunt the go forward we haven't been afraid to shift the ball, sometimes that goes wrong and it's a negative gain or an error, but more often than not we move it so well we can find some easy metres or outright score a length of the field try. That immediately changes the mindset of the defence and makes them more reluctant to compress too heavily, which means the other team is getting fewer bodies in tackles than he's been swamped with for years probably.

It's all going to get a lot harder if Jacob gets hurt but atm we're on track to have a starting middle where all three average over 100 running metres per game (J Saf, Mooney, Crokes). Believe it or not, that's not very common in the modern game.

The potential this team had to be good at generating go forward & then converting it at a high clip was always there. We just needed a coaching change to make it happen.