Best 19 in 2027

Beatell said:
Yeah i dont want to jump the gun on him too much, but geez i think hes going to have a very very good career, playing plenty of rep footy. And im so bloody glad all he ever wanted to do was play for the Knights. Hopefully we never have to get in a bidding war for him.
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This kid is something special.
I think he will improve heeps just this coming offseason.
Won't be long before the number 10 is undisputedly his.
If we can somehow manage to upgrade him every couple of years before he goes to market, that will avoid the bidding wars.
 
Best defence efficiency

Forwards and hookers

Jones 97.7%
Saulo 96.9%
Hopwood 96.6%
Lucas 96.4%
Crouch 96.2%
ESL 96.2%
Frizell 95.5%
Mooney 94.4%
Crossland 93.3%
Cant 93.1%
Croker 92.5%
Graham 91.9%
Saifiti 91.7%
McEwen 90.3%
Manuleleua 88.9%
Hola 85.7%

Backs and halves

Winter 100%
Brown 92.2%
Sharpe 90.2%
Best 86.9%
Hunt 84.3%
Young 79.5%
Gagai 79.5%
Gamble 79.4%
Smith 73.5%
Ponga 72.6%
Marzhew 71%
De Courcey 66.7%
Schiller 53.3%
 
Haters gonna hate….😅

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Haku’sAfro85 said:
1. Ponga
2. Young
3. Winter
4. Best
5. Marzhew
6. Sharpe
7. Brown (Smith early rounds)
8. Saifiti
9. Crossland
10. McEwen
11. Lucas
12. Manuleleua
13. Hopwood

14. Smith (Graham early rounds)
15. Mooney
16. Niukore
17. Croker
18. Hunt
19. Crouch
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I actually like the idea of starting with Jsaf and Hopgood/crouch then having mooney and McKewan come on 25 minutes in when there’s some tired legs etc.
 
Billy said:
Best defence efficiency

Forwards and hookers

Jones 97.7%
Saulo 96.9%
Hopwood 96.6%
Lucas 96.4%
Crouch 96.2%
ESL 96.2%
Frizell 95.5%
Mooney 94.4%
Crossland 93.3%
Cant 93.1%
Croker 92.5%
Graham 91.9%
Saifiti 91.7%
McEwen 90.3%
Manuleleua 88.9%
Hola 85.7%

Backs and halves

Winter 100%
Brown 92.2%
Sharpe 90.2%
Best 86.9%
Hunt 84.3%
Young 79.5%
Gagai 79.5%
Gamble 79.4%
Smith 73.5%
Ponga 72.6%
Marzhew 71%
De Courcey 66.7%
Schiller 53.3%
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Surprised how high hunt is on the list, but the defence is saw in winters 1 game was immense. If he can keep that high standard and setup young. Well try getting through winter and brown.
 
Treadly said:
Surprised how high hunt is on the list, but the defence is saw in winters 1 game was immense. If he can keep that high standard and setup young. Well try getting through winter and brown.
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Winter is tackling at 85.5% in reserve grade, so making 12/12 in one game of firstgrade is a bit of an outlier. 85.5% is still good for an 18 year old playing seniors for the first time.
Hunt is a guy who stands out because of his appearance - I think we all see his rookie mistakes because he's so hard to miss and they stick in our minds. For a guy who plays a different position every week, his stats all look good.
If he gets that right centre position and plays there all season, I think he'll have a great year.
You could say the same for Winter.
It's a good problem to have.
 
Billy said:
Winter is tackling at 85.5% in reserve grade, so making 12/12 in one game of firstgrade is a bit of an outlier. 85.5% is still good for an 18 year old playing seniors for the first time.
Hunt is a guy who stands out because of his appearance - I think we all see his rookie mistakes because he's so hard to miss and they stick in our minds. For a guy who plays a different position every week, his stats all look good.
If he gets that right centre position and plays there all season, I think he'll have a great year.
You could say the same for Winter.
It's a good problem to have.
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Defence will be a huge part of who gets the nod playing next to Young, but who has the better catch and pass? A big part of their role will be executing that as crisply as possible. A big part of our identity in attack is executing that to utilize Dom's speed for yardage and scoring opportunities. Gags and Best among the best in the comp at this.
 
Thieves Like Us said:
Haters gonna hate….😅

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As much as this account is trolling, I'd be lying if I said I'm not worried about it. And not for the reason they're mentioning either, I don't think sides are going to suddenly work out how to shut down Ponga after a decade in first grade, or that our halves are rubbish. That's pretty braindead stuff.

But we are going to have a target on our back next year ... sides will turn up knowing it's a tough game and bringing that bit extra. Our style of play is a season older and sides will have an off-season to figure out how to counteract it.

I think Holbrook's big challenge in the off season is making sure the playing group doesn't just expect it all to happen again, or think "we're back to full strength in 2027, we'll be unstoppable". Ponga and other senior players will be a huge part of that too. But we really need to step everything up another notch if we want even an equally successful 2027.

I just look at sides that have had a huge year out of nowhere in previous years, and so many fall back to the pack the year after. We saw it ourselves to an extent in 2023.

Definitely think we do have a lot of the ingredients right though, there's every reason to be optimistic about next year.
 
I just have too much belief in Justin as a coach to think he's gonna show up next year with the same plan playing the same way and just expect it to work.

The next step would be to better leverage the threat of our ability to score everywhere to become a team that's better at rolling downhill, controlling the game more. And the fact teams will know they can't relax, can't clock off, on plays 3 & 4, AND they have to maintain a wide defensive line - this should help with that.
 
See I don’t look at our 2023 and think it was a fluke. 2024 we should have been better but that game against Cronulla in the rain when AOB decided to revert back to AOB ball was the catalyst for what was to come.

I have no doubt Justin and the staff will come up with methods to counteract teams trying to nullify what we are doing
 
Macca89 said:
See I don’t look at our 2023 and think it was a fluke. 2024 we should have been better but that game against Cronulla in the rain when AOB decided to revert back to AOB ball was the catalyst for what was to come.

I have no doubt Justin and the staff will come up with methods to counteract teams trying to nullify what we are doing
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I’m pretty sure the game you’re referring to was back in 22 where we lost 18/0.

We completely went away from what worked from the opening round in 24.
 
Sorry you’re right. Seems to have blended together. Still similar point though that we reverted to AOB ball instead of playing what worked to get us into the finals
 
to start the season...

Ponga
Dom
Hunt/Winter
Best
Marzhew
Sharpe
Smith
JSaf
Crossland
Hopwood
Lucas
Manu/McEwen
Croker

Graham
Mooney
Crouch
Manu/McEwen
Hunt/Winter
Niukore

I'd like to see Brown and Sandon in the halves and Sharpe at centre when Dylan is back, but either way I'm just looking forward to going into next season with some optimism, as much as losing the GF hurts, I havent been this excited by a Knights squad in a longgggg time.
 
AOB coached a rigid system where he always insisted if we did it right we'd win and if something went wrong it's the players executing his system wrong.

Holbrook coaches them to play footy, back themselves, play what they see. Teaches them every game is different and you need to be able to adjust.

That's why AOB usually seemed to need for most things to go right - always "chasing a complete 80 minutes" - to get wins, and Justin had them winning in more different ways. That's why when stuff would go badly wrong in one game it often seemed to spiral under AOB, or he'd take us right back to first principles, or we'd have a new issue after we fixed something, whereas Justin seems to be able to fix stuff which is going wrong in the next game. Straight away.

This is why I can't imagine us being "worked out" and losing the whole season as we try to fix it. The Storm have been "worked out" or "exposed" plenty over the years, and seemed to have an ability to fix things pretty quickly. Helps to have elite spine talent, which we do have.
 
Macca89 said:
Sorry you’re right. Seems to have blended together. Still similar point though that we reverted to AOB ball instead of playing what worked to get us into the finals
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That round 1 loss in 24 was one of the most gut wrenching in my time as a knights fan. I expected us to continue doing what worked from the previous season and ended up watching one of the most disjointed home performances you are likely to see. The regression was shocking.
 
It's certainly the case that a lot of teams "lift" for Melbourne, Easts etc, and their success in spite of that is impressive. We're not going to take anyone by surprise next year.

But for me the big regression predictors are stuff like:

- The team had a long run of roster cohesion, no major injuries, and they won heaps of games in that time.
- Notably brilliant form over a fairly long range of games - not just winning games but they're good, but playing out of their skins.
- Dominant record in very close games, especially one score game (eg the Raiders going 10-1 in close games in 2025). We were 6-4 regular season then 7-5 when you add in finals, and a couple of those close wins were games we had well in hand and slacked off near the end.
- Having to replace a key spine player.

I don't think any of those apply to us. We had a **** injury run. Our longest winning streak was 4. I doubt there would be many teams fielding starting 19's that were more different than ours in Round 1 and the Grand Final. About as much went wrong as could go wrong and look what they achieved. How could I not believe?

We are still yet to see a single game where we start Crossland, Brown, Sharpe & Ponga, with Jacob Saifiti & Trey Mooney starting at prop, with a strong bench rotation of Cody Hopwood and whoever out of Crouch, Niukore, McEwen, or whoever else you might wish to name coming on to help us keep the foot down. And then elite back rowers on both edges no matter who we name, all strike weapons, all additive yardage workers (most teams do not have this).

Same team but instead of a pack full of question marks, I reckon we will have one of the best packs in the comp overall. Same team but either keeping the yardage battle even or winning it a lot more often than not. Let's. ****ing. Go. Can't wait.
 
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