2025 pre season thread

Defence wins games said:
Unless Bennett brought half a test team with him, our results wouldn’t be much better than Obi.
Now Bellamy, that’s a different standard and culture. He would win a comp with our roster with the first few years, with probably a few changes to players who just go around each week, replaced with no name guys who would have a go.
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Bellamy has had more than two decades to build a culture. If he changed clubs he wouldn’t get success straight away if at all. His first few years at Melbourne were similar to AOB’s.
 
Bellamy arguably the goat but it's come with a significant amount of good fortune. Producing Harry Grant (among many others) at the exact moment they needed that profile is lucky. But it's undoubtedly insanely good coaching. But there is an element of luck there
 
Bellamy wasn't just given a 20-year contract to build a culture, he started as all new coaches do and earned the extensions and reputation ever since (with a little extra help in the late 2000s). His first year they finished 5th and won a finals game after not playing finals the previous 2 years, and had already surpassed AOB's finals record the following year before Smith, Slater and Cronk became Smith, Slater and Cronk. To this day hasn't had a .500% or less season, of which the Knights have had 3 under AOB despite our apparent excellent record.

Unsurprisingly comparing AOB to Bellamy does him no favours. If you want to feel better about AOB's track record I would suggest comparing him to the first 5 years of Ricky Stuart (current Raiders stint), Brad Arthur and Paul McGregor.

Would love for anyone to sell me on the culture that's being built here also. This year off the top of my head we’ve had:
- one of the senior players have to get moved on due to not putting in
- top paid half getting into multiple stinks behind the scenes and being ostracised from the playing group
- apparent cliques/infighting within the playing group
- Jenkins apparently refusing a first grade jersey
- Leo evidently not being overly keen to sign an extension

Then they get on the field and it’s still ‘hopefully Kalyn wins us the game’ as it was when AOB arrived, only now they’re incredibly boring to watch at the same time.
 
There’s no doubt Bellamy is a great coach, but it’s easier to keep success going than take a terrible club culture and turn it around.

Look at Wests at the minute - they’ve brought through this hugely talented junior Lachlan Galvin, and since basically his first game there’s been constant speculation about his contract, whether he wants to leave, etc. Partially because the kid seems to be holding them to ransom somewhat - guarantee me that jersey or I’m outta here.

So what do they do with him? Do they put their foot down, say “team comes first, kid. No preferential treatment.” Well that sounds good, except you do actually need good players to compete. Do you roll over and essentially let him run the club? Cool, you’ve secured the kid - at the cost of your culture, and you’ve got teammates side-eyeing how much preferential treatment the kid gets.

We all like to lol @ Wests, but this kind of problem is one without an easy answer and I’m glad I don’t have to deal with it.

Meanwhile, Melbourne just pick the eyes out of other juniors systems, and their very talented developing halves apparently just sit around happily waiting their turn until well into their 20’s behind the stars they already have & the club doesn’t ever have to think about it. Because that’s the winning environment, that’s the best situation, everybody knows it. Then Melbourne get all the credit for how well the youngster developed, even if the bulk of the development happened elsewhere. I don’t think I’ve ever heard wests get any credit for how well they handled Galvin’s development…

The whole time, Melbourne cops very little speculation about whether their players want to leave. The advantage of being down there in a city where the local sports media gives all its column inches to a different sport.
 
Les Misérables said:
Bellamy arguably the goat but it's come with a significant amount of good fortune. Producing Harry Grant (among many others) at the exact moment they needed that profile is lucky. But it's undoubtedly insanely good coaching. But there is an element of luck there
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Good luck often comes with hard work.
Bellamy takes players from other clubs yes, but they aren’t world beaters when they go there. But they become great players under his tutelage.
Old Wayne can’t do that as history has shown over many years.
 
mullenmagic said:
- top paid half getting into multiple stinks behind the scenes and being ostracised from the playing group
- apparent cliques/infighting within the playing group
- Jenkins apparently refusing a first grade jersey
- Leo evidently not being overly keen to sign an extension
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A lot of “apparently” and pure guessing with no concrete evidence. Things like “the players hate the coach/don’t like each other tend to be thrown around when a team isn’t performing particularly well.

I tend to agree with the Hastings one because he has a track record at every other club he’s been to (clearly a him problem, not a club problem).

But you can’t tell me the team didn’t look like they weren’t playing for each other or the coach. That plus interviews and social media suggesting quite the opposite. You can tell when a team has given up on each other.

Leo “not being overly keen” to sign an extension is just a spin on his clear right as an off contract player that is attracting a lot of interest from other clubs. He would be stupid not to see what is out there. Just because it’s drawn out a bit, that was always going to happen with test duties and him coming back from his offseason holiday.
 
I’m definitely not a huge AOB supporter, but I reckon having arguably the absolute worst combination of 6, 7, 9 in the comp is a much bigger issue in our difficulties wining finals games than him. A lot of coaches that would get much worse results with the same roster. What I don’t like about AOB is how he changed our attacking tactics to be so negative in 2024 after seeing attacking play work so well for us in 2023, but at the same time for all we know at training that’s all they were capable of. Hastings in particular fell off a cliff between 2023 and 2024.
 
Gamble on ABC radio this morning.
Says this is his 9th pre-season and the hardest yet.
Says there was a review and they fell short in 2024 and are working on the reasons why - doesn't say what that means, but I suppose it means fitness wasn't good enough.
Reporter said all the top 30 are back now.
 
Billy said:
Says this is his 9th pre-season and the hardest yet.
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IMG_9882.jpeg
 
frankLauda said:
Bellamy is a better coach than Wayne IMO.
I think Ivan clearly needs to start coming into consideration as one of the best coaches ever. 6 GF appearances 4 premierships.
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Yeah I've read his recent book and it's a good read, it's no surprise he was initially thought of so highly and we saw what he did with the Warriors as well. But people seem to keep forgetting they were pretty patient with him (minus the sacking where there was a lot of injuries) even moreso the second time around when there was twice as much pressure to succeed from the get go. But he seems to be a good in between mix of old school and modern coaching to survive.
Kind of why I'm a bit more patient with O'Brien in playing the long game with the team. Though if there were more missed finals appearances like Brownie maybe myself and many others would think differently.
And as we always say, is/was there anyone better? Nope.
 
www.newcastleherald.com.au

Why Knights playmaker is just 'happy to be in the 17' next year

The 28-year-old finished last season as the bench utility.
www.newcastleherald.com.au www.newcastleherald.com.au

Article on Gamble.
Says he is targeting a spot in the 17 - any spot.
Says he played some lock and hooker off the bench at the back of last year.
Says he missed 9 games with injury and had to play with painkillers and daily anti-inflamatories, but is feeling good now and trained all off season to come back as fit as he could.
Says they haven't worked on positions yet, but he's up for anything they want him to do.
 
Billy said:
www.newcastleherald.com.au

Why Knights playmaker is just 'happy to be in the 17' next year

The 28-year-old finished last season as the bench utility.
www.newcastleherald.com.au www.newcastleherald.com.au

Article on Gamble.
Says he is targeting a spot in the 17 - any spot.
Says he played some lock and hooker off the bench at the back of last year.
Says he missed 9 games with injury and had to play with painkillers and daily anti-inflamatories, but is feeling good now and trained all off season to come back as fit as he could.
Says they haven't worked on positions yet, but he's up for anything they want him to do.
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What a great clubman. In all honesty, he deserves first shot at five eight position, based on the last season he was fully fit. Was one of our best in 2023.
 
mozza said:
Yeah Obi getting zero credit from anyone in the media for leading us to the Finals last year was a joke. People were saying we’d come last after Ponga went down against the Bulldogs. We then won 4 games in a row but we’re still a 1 man team apparently.

Journalists generally are a complete joke nowadays and RL journos are close to the most incompetent of a terrible bunch.
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I think you will find that actual journalism is one of the rarest trades on earth. All of it is tabloid worthy trash, “I gave birth to an alien” level of trash. I challenge you to read any article where there isn’t at least one spelling mistake or they haven’t repeated the same paragraph twice to fill in gaps or it’s literally contradicting itself.

I think they taught a bunch of idiots that ai programs can do all the work but they’ve become too lazy to proof read a damn thing. So when you ask a journalist for clarification, “I know you are you said you are” is about as strong a reply as you could possible expect.
 
MBQLD said:
I think you will find that actual journalism is one of the rarest trades on earth. All of it is tabloid worthy trash, “I gave birth to an alien” level of trash. I challenge you to read any article where there isn’t at least one spelling mistake or they haven’t repeated the same paragraph twice to fill in gaps or it’s literally contradicting itself.

I think they taught a bunch of idiots that ai programs can do all the work but they’ve become too lazy to proof read a damn thing. So when you ask a journalist for clarification, “I know you are you said you are” is about as strong a reply as you could possible expect.
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But underneath this trash journalism lies long held bias against certain teams, particularly those outside metropolitan areas. This bias is further fuelled by so called rugby league experts who bring their own bias and bull…. attitudes, particularly favouring teams that they(or their mates) have played for or coached.
The beauty of modern technology still allows us to watch the pure action in silence, denying the empty vessels from their moments.
 
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