Adam O'Brien replacement?

IMO the thing which would really be the difference maker for our fortunes is getting through pre-season, trials and then the first few rounds without losing half of the top 30 (including 2-3 first choice spine players) to injury…

All I really care about re: trials is that the first choice players get a few reps in for fitness and then get off the field on one piece. We could lose 40-0 next week, but if Miller, Ponga, Hastings, Brailey, Elliott and both Saifiti twins are all on the team sheet in round 1, and still on there in round 6, as far as I’m concerned we’re miles ahead of where we have been in previous years.
 
Trial scores are irrelevant.

It would have been nice to look like a well coached side that can manage a base level of competency in the fundamentals though. There were plenty of top 30 guys that will need to be called on during the year that you wouldn't feed based on that showing.

Maybe we will see competency next weekend.
 
I also get the feeling aob is a bit too clever for himself at times.

I guarantee the other NRL sides aren't laying awake at night worried about the knights attacking structures when they can't even hold the ball. So maybe use the first trial to build some fluency and execution rather than trying to keep what I'm sure is a revolutionary attack secret.
 
It’s a team who have had multiple and I mean MULTIPLE changes to the spine in the past 1-5years. Either from injuries, or poor form of individual players. No club is going to go well with that regularly happening.

Also the individual talent of our juniors has been pretty poor for a few seasons and i feel that is a mix of lack of growth in junior levels and poor coaching structure at Knights.

Top 17 of this years squad I think
Can make the bottom 8. And that’s with a perfect run with barely any injuries. Especially to spine. But realistically a 12th - 7th is the area.

As Harvee is trying to say, we’ll only get better if the spine and starting forward pack stay fit all year. Then hopefully next year we recruit to have better quality replacements and our juniors thrive with another off season and keep trying to climb that competition ladder and stay there.

The team needs luck, the coaching staff need luck. The club though, needs to actively plan for future seasons. I think they’ve been doing that with the likes of Rivett who looks like a talented 5/8 and of course KPP and Pryce. But we need more.
 
sherpa said:
After watching more of the pre season games, we could be in for another painful year
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Newcastle were, without doubt, the poorest performing team over the weekend. My hope is that it was only a trial and that teams were giving their squads an opportunity. No team collected NRL points over the weekend.
 
Lefty said:
That‘s why I like watching the Knights games on TV, I really dislike the trips home after a loss. After watching an our games on TV, I can immediately do something else if they lose.
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Oh goodness, that is an awfully sad situation, but I too understand that feeling. I take the loses personally because it is painfully obvious what the answers are. To make it worse, our players come out after a loss and tell us they are in the entertainment business and they will try to fix things up before the next game. The killer punch is when the coach comes out and tells us the players are all hurting in the change room and that it is a long term project to fix things at the club.
And yet the same thing happens next week with the same or similar lines.
Being a Knights supporter is understanding 2 truths:
You have to be a masochist to support our team; and
You have to have a rusted on belief in Einstein’s Theory of Madness, i.e., that doing the same things over and over again will give you a different result.
 
Indi
Defence wins games said:
Newcastle were, without doubt, the poorest performing team over the weekend. My hope is that it was only a trial and that teams were giving their squads an opportunity. No team collected NRL points over the weekend.
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I didn’t see Tigers v Warriors but if scoreline is anything to go by?
 
Yes, t
slotmachine said:
Trial scores are irrelevant.

It would have been nice to look like a well coached side that can manage a base level of competency in the fundamentals though. There were plenty of top 30 guys that will need to be called on during the year that you wouldn't feed based on that showing.

Maybe we will see competency next weekend.
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This has been a long held hope for all Knights supporters for a really long time now. When is long enough too long?
Years ago there was another team like the Knights in the competition called the North Sydney Bears, who had a remarkable reputation for clutching losses from the jaws of victory. And we all know how that ended.
 
With the
Billy said:
There's only one way for Newcastle to skin a cat.
They aren't a rich club in a popular location, so don't have any of the advantages needed to win the signings roulette game.
As Allan Bell said, we brought through a good group who all learnt to play the same style and trust each other, and we won a few premierships.
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best player to have ever played the game.
 
I
HarVeeGee13 said:
Cam Smith was sneaky big though. Not an amazing physique you’d put on a calendar but he was actually a bigger bloke than a lot of hookers you think of as more “physical” like Michael Ennis, Andrew McCullough etc. Probably made more tackles than any other player in NRL history over the course of his career and you have to be athletic to be able to do that. He wasn’t quick but he was strong.
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have never rated Ennis, and it is criminal to mention him in the same sentence as Smith or even in the same hemisphere. Other then his bad mouthing of opponents, he was a very ordinary, but sometimes lucky player.
Smith was a legend of the game, almost up there with Joey and the King.
 
“It’s different to Newcastle, but I’m loving Parramatta.

“It was a bit of a shock when I first came into the Eels squad in those first couple of weeks of training.

“It took me time to get used to the level of intensity that they have at Parra.

“But once I got going, I started to find my feet.

“I’ve still got work to do to increase my fitness levels, that’s what the Eels demand of you.
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Article about Jirah going to Parra.
 
I think there would be a reason why Jirah was let go by the Knights, perhaps it was that he was putting in enough effort at training.
 
It's hard to imagine that O'Brien isn't just ripping them to shreds in training. The guy may very well be clueless when it comes to gameplanning and revving up players, but you'd think the one thing he'd be good at is training them hard, coming from the Melbourne system and being a defence minded guy. Especially too after a bad year with his job on the line.
 
Defence wins games said:
Th

is is what has been the problem at the Knights for years. I have suspected this by the way our teams have played over the last couple of decades.
Look what happened to the Cows and Sharks after they were flogged last pre-season!
Maybe Newcastle is a holiday camp for NRL coaches and players.
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Sharks & cows had new coaches??
 
I don’t know what the stats say but I thought Newcastle the first two years under AOB were pretty good defensively and played tougher footy than I’d seen from a Knights side in a long time. Probably helped having a halfback like Pearce but I think it’ll be interesting to see what we look like this year.
 
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