2020 Pre Season and Trial Games

sadly, he way it works now is that those young guys could be playing at Melbourne under coach O'Brien in 5 years.
 
1. Best
2. Tuala
3. Sasagi
4. Hunt
5. Toa
6. Hoy
7. Crossland
8. Ese,ese
9. Brailey
10. DSaf
11. Momoisea
12. Fitzy
13. Barnett

14. Watson
15. J Safiti
16. Saulo
17. Crocker
 
slotmachine said:
I thought most of our forwards apart from saulo were pretty underwhelming with the ball.

Would be interesting to see what the stats say.
Click to expand...

Well the NRL did stats but not how many minutes each player got so it's hard to gauge effectiveness.
The feeling I had was Sione got the most minutes and Guerra the least for what it's worth.

I think Dan, Klemmer, Herman, Barnett, Fitz, Glasby and Guerra are all pencilled in unless they stink up the trials with a shoot-out for the last spot.

Jirah: 10 runs 79m (7.9 av) 13 tackles 3 missed (81%)
Jones: 5 runs 52m (10.4 av) 7 tackles 2 missed (78%)
J Saf: 10 runs 95m (9.5 av) 11 tackles 1 missed (92%)
Saulo 9 runs 113m (12.6 av) 15 tackles 5 missed (75%)
Sione 6 runs 49m (8.2 av) 22 tackles 6 missed (79%)
Guerra: 6 runs 53m (8.8 av) 7 tackle 1 missed (88%)

Think I sold J Saf short, but Saulo definitely passed the eye test running the ball.
 
Hard to know if O'Brien will name a full strength side for the first trial or the second trial or neither.

I'm going to say the first trial will be the fringe or contested selections, and depending on how guys go, the second trial will be our full strength side to start and plenty of interchanges.

First trial;

1 Hoy
2 Toa
3 Shibasaki
4 Tuala
5 Hunt
6 Mann
7 Lino
8 Jake Saf
9 Randall
10 King
11 Sione
12 Guerra
13 Eseese

14 Huth
15 Saulo
16 Momoisea
17 Sasagi
 
I don't know what to read into stats from the 9s.
Kikau probably has amazing numbers for a forward, but he was running down the sideline bumping wingers out of the way.
Even the tackle stats have to take into account that the defensive line was spread thin and there weren't many forwards running at other forwards - it was all fast guys trying to run around forwards.

The only thing I saw that I liked was that Jirah was defending a bit wider than he has ever had to before (always being a prop before) and he was moving laterally well and covering a lot of ground. I noticed that because I was looking for it though - this being the first time he has defended as a second row.
 
Barnett must be going well if all the other firstgraders got a date with Cupples in the gym and he got a weekend in Perth with his feet up.
 
Interested to know but not critical, some players played all three games where others seemed to play very little, do we have a break down, not so much minutes played but how many games, hard to follow with all the ins and outs. Did any one not play?
 
Frank McWilliams said:
Interested to know but not critical, some players played all three games where others seemed to play very little, do we have a break down, not so much minutes played but how many games, hard to follow with all the ins and outs. Did any one not play?
Click to expand...
I think O'Brien made it really clear that he wasn't risking anyone he might play in round 1.
He dropped Shibasaki, Hunt and Mann after game 1 and I think that was because he'd seen enough to think they might play in round 1, and he didn't pick Barnett at all, and Guerra only got a few minutes on the field. Other guys like Sione, Lino, Hoy, Jones, Momoisea, and all the development players and trialists got big minutes on the field, which I take as a sign that they'll have to do a lot in the trials to get into the 17 for round 1.
There are some rules about picking a certain number of your top squad for the 9s, so O'Brien was forced to name a few guys he probably didn't want to - but he really managed to keep his best players in cotton wool till he has to use them.
 
Last edited:
Apparently Newcastle and Canberra are bidding to hold the next 9s.
If our new facilities are ready we will have plenty of change rooms and warm up fields, and we should be able to sell out the ground for 2 days.
Wests should back the bid strongly because they will make money from their clubs etc, and local government seems keen on backing events at the moment, so we should be able to put in a strong bid.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top