2025 - The year in review.

Defender1

Defender1

Matthew Johns
A lack of resilience and footy IQ has been a common theme throughout all the grades this year. Came into the season with a lack of depth and experience, and have paid the price.

We have far too many young guys playing a grade or two above their current abilities, whilst at the same time players we rejected are excelling at other clubs. We need to get to the bottom of how the club has found itself in this position.
 
Smashed with injuries to the pack while we were trying to implement a new spine, pretty much just one game with the forwards back before we lost the new spine.

Really hardcore commitment to getting a combination between Sharpe & Ponga going and they struggled to cohere and got in each other’s way a lot. I saw Blake Austin suggest that we focused really hard on trying to get Fletcher get good “looks” in attack and that took away from the “looks” Kalyn was getting, and I think that’s right and sums up the issue: they’re both amazing guys to play “to”, questionable guys to play “through”. Huge challenge to bring it all together for the next coach: by way of comparison to the Storm as people like to do, it feels like next year we have two Papenhyuzens, one Munster, no Grant no Hughes.

But take those two out and it’s even worse lol.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Smashed with injuries to the pack while we were trying to implement a new spine, pretty much just one game with the forwards back before we lost the new spine.

Really hardcore commitment to getting a combination between Sharpe & Ponga going and they struggled to cohere and got in each other’s way a lot. I saw Blake Austin suggest that we focused really hard on trying to get Fletcher get good “looks” in attack and that took away from the “looks” Kalyn was getting, and I think that’s right and sums up the issue: they’re both amazing guys to play “to”, questionable guys to play “through”. Huge challenge to bring it all together for the next coach: by way of comparison to the Storm as people like to do, it feels like next year we have two Papenhyuzens, one Munster, no Grant no Hughes.

But take those two out and it’s even worse lol.
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Couldn’t have summed it up better
 
I said mid season that POS is the man who put us in the position we are in.

We went into this season with barely 17 genuine firstgraders on the books, and a dozen or more longshots like Annan, Mat Arthur, Schiller etc etc.

The injuries started happening, and we had to rush in Hunt, McEwen, ESL, McCarthy, Votano etc etc - long before they were ready.

I don't know if we are much better off, roster wise, for next year. We are letting a lot of firstgraders go - Leo, KPP, Elliott, Hetherington, Hastings, Brailey, Cogger. We are at least bringing in some guys with firstgrade experience - Brown, Saulo, Hola, Smith, Mooney - but, if i'm honest, I think the roster for next year is weaker than this year.

Our only hope is for us to have a good year with injuries next year and for a dozen or more of POS's longshot recruits to pan out for us.
 
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”.
 
jamesgould said:
Yeah it was mentioned that we pretty much had to find D-Saf (or someone comparable) a new home or we wouldn’t have fitted under the cap this year.
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How can we be in that position when the NRL has to sign off all of the contracts to avoid this?
 
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.
 
Agree with RA, this year was very similar to 2022.

Same as 2022 we won our first two games and then didn't win again until Magic Round against a similarly weak opponent and both in 2022 and 2025 we only won two home games all year.

This season was a disaster and even in our wins, they weren't really great wins apart from the 2 wins against the Phins and that comeback against Manly. Also was good to beat Penrith albeit a NSW Cup heavy side that night.

Ponga had his worst year I can recall in a Knights jersey, not helped with injuries.

I think our forward pack depth this year was really weak and especially after you take out JSaf and Leo. We really struggled in the middle. Front Row depth should hopefully be improved in 2026 with Mooney, Saulo arriving and Crouch, ESL and Hopwood ready to step up at some point.

Lucas and Sharpe injured added more misery with our attack being even worse off. But getting Dom Young back was nice, I think he'll be back to his best in 2026.

I think AOB handled himself well last week in his mid week press conference but it's clearly time for a new voice at the helm. One thing I thought AOB did well in the last few years is not throwing young blokes into the wolves early and didn't just hand anyone a jersey.

If I was running the club, Justin Holbrook should the next head coach and not Blake Green.
 
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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Note the term allegedly. Peter O'Sullivan is responsible and most of his captain's picks have been dud's. Our 2026 predicament will be far worse because he will have less money for first grade players. We now have 2 players taking a huge slice of the cap. I still cannot comprehend the people on this forum defending POS's recruitment. Fast forward 12 months and we will see how many are still apologizing on behalf of an old white guy past his used by date and no hope of earning the same income anywhere else. His only success came at Melbourne and we all know how they managed that. Maybe POS needs two sets of books!
 
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