2025 - The year in review.

The wording “boring” comes to mind also. This year would have had to have been the toughest year to watch the knights. Not sure if 22 was worse in recent memory. But uninspired, mistake filled, dumb play. I have not been watching full games the last couple of months. AOB comments “we are a boring team” still ring true. Look there’s no denying we have had a bad run of injuries but it’s still no excuse for being so poor.

I really hope the “rebuild” and focus on building a deeper squad works. The Knights should be a top club in the NRL.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Also allegedly went into this season over the cap by $400K so, no scope to improve the roster for 2025. If that’s true, the pervious recruitment staff is more to blame. Players had to go and they had to be replaced on the cheap.

I don’t know how it can be said we’re worse off. Of the first seven first graders leaving:

Leo - Yes, this is a bad one to lose. Good first grade prop.
KPP - Simply is not that good. McEwen has been outplaying him for the last couple of months.
Elliott - Good player who hasn’t been fit all year, does this count?
Hetherington - Not good AND hasn’t been fit all year.
Hastings, Brailey, Cogger - Guys who have the entire fanbase ready to drive them to their new homes at this point.

If we do get Smith there’s a guy who has handily outplayed the three departing spine players for the last two seasons. And it’s also mad to just handwave Dylan Brown as just “a guy with some first grade experience”.
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400k over the salary cap and in a shootout for the wooden spoon… how embarrassing
 
R_A said:
Shades of 2022. Never seemed to have a proper plan at halfback (considering he knew Hastings was in the doghouse, similar to knowing Pearce was likely gonna find a better deal elsewhere early on), injuries disrupted all season long, some nice young guys get unearthed, Ponga never really gets going and gets shut down early.
In hindsight if AOB knows they are making a splash on Brown before a ball is kicked maybe he does enough 7th-8th to keep his job? That would be going with unpopular "short term" decisions.
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Lol

Speaking to how AOB shouldve controlled for bad outcomes, from where Im standing, leaving McEwen in the starting side for as long as he did, watching McEwens defence deteriorate, was imo probably the greatest contributing factor to us getting the spoon.

Go back and watch the last 2 months of footy. Im not blaming the young bloke, I love watching him play, but he had no business playing 80 mins in the backrow each week. And it resulted in a player who had totally lost his defensive discipline and focus by the end of that run of games.

And if I'm the players, working my *** off and putting my body on the line so that a single single chink in the armour can undo any work that ive done until that point sounds like a recipe for total collapse, particularly given the state of morale with injuries etc. And it was emblematic of AOB making weak selection decisions

AOB well and truly earned that spoon, make no mistake about it.
 
Les Misérables said:
Lol

Speaking to how AOB shouldve controlled for bad outcomes, from where Im standing, leaving McEwen in the starting side for as long as he did, watching McEwens defence deteriorate, was imo probably the greatest contributing factor to us getting the spoon.

Go back and watch the last 2 months of footy. Im not blaming the young bloke, I love watching him play, but he had no business playing 80 mins in the backrow each week. And it resulted in a player who had totally lost his defensive discipline and focus by the end of that run of games.

And if I'm the players, working my *** off and putting my body on the line so that a single single chink in the armour can undo any work that ive done until that point sounds like a recipe for total collapse, particularly given the state of morale with injuries etc. And it was emblematic of AOB making weak selection decisions

AOB well and truly earned that spoon, make no mistake about it.
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Seeing as though McEwen took over as our most threatening attacking player on that edge you have to give him consideration to also then be a little less capable defence wise.
When you look at him, first year of NRL, probably on $150k compared to the other 2nd rower who was on $800k I don’t get why people are bagging a 19 year old against a 23 year old England test player

McEwen would have been planed to play 8 or so games off bench and he took the load that Lucas was carrying all year as main attack threat on the edge

And if AOB dropped him and said he was resting him then people would whinge about him not playing him

Sometimes you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t
 
knights80 said:
Seeing as though McEwen took over as our most threatening attacking player on that edge you have to give him consideration to also then be a little less capable defence wise.
When you look at him, first year of NRL, probably on $150k compared to the other 2nd rower who was on $800k I don’t get why people are bagging a 19 year old against a 23 year old England test player

McEwen would have been planed to play 8 or so games off bench and he took the load that Lucas was carrying all year as main attack threat on the edge

And if AOB dropped him and said he was resting him then people would whinge about him not playing him

Sometimes you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t
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Also not sure who could have come in and done a better job than McEwan.

It was a baptism of fire for him, but I think he did extremely well in the circumstances and has a super bright future.

To say he was the biggest factor in us getting the spoon ... well I can't agree with that.

Hunt copping a lot of blame which to me is also way off the mark, he's a 19yo doing better than most 19yos would in that situation.

At the end of the day we had extremely thin depth this year, when a few key players went down we were always going to struggle. Effort was there for a long period of the season, but by the end I don't think they had much left to give. Usually I'd say the blame has to lie on the senior players, but there were only a few there by the final few rounds. The likes of Gagai I think had just totally run out of gas.

Just the way the season goes sometimes, I guess. All I can say is we need to work on getting a lot more depth into the roster, and forwards in particular, and that seems to slowly be happening.
 
I think we are being a bit harsh on McEwen, he went as good or better than most on here would have expected in a side that wasn’t going well.
If we can start injury free in 26 I would like to see McEwen and those other young guys such as Hunt, ESL Manuleleua, Hopwood etc play mostly Cup with the aim of developing further now that they have tasted 1st grade
 
Frank McWilliams said:
I think we are being a bit harsh on McEwen, he went as good or better than most on here would have expected in a side that wasn’t going well.
If we can start injury free in 26 I would like to see McEwen and those other young guys such as Hunt, ESL Manuleleua, Hopwood etc play mostly Cup with the aim of developing further now that they have tasted 1st grade
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Who is your other second rower Lucas and?
 
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