Ex-Knights Watch

I see the Brisbane Broncos profile for Zac Hosking says he is 198cm and 97kg.
I don't know if that's a typo or a work of fiction.
He has always been reasonably tall - maybe 190cm - but he has always been built like a greyhound.
In our juniors he was super fit, but under 90kg.
Even when he got a firstgrade pre-season just out of juniors he struggled to get over 90kg.
He has built up over the years, but 97kg is probably with lead in his boots I think.
The funny thing is that he looks just like his dad, but his dad pretty much had the same build, only with about 10kg of beer belly. He was pretty much the last of the old style props who had 12 beers a day and a packet of smokes as part of their training regime.
Zac is a gym junkie and insanely fit, while his dad was the opposite.
 
Good debut from Zac.
Just did what he does - work, work, work - Had the most runs, ran the most metres, 2nd for post contact metres, 2nd in the tackle count. Never much of a threat with the ball, but makes a lot of good decisions in defence and makes his tackles over and over.
 
Sad thing is that Zac has been very close to NRL level for about 3 years while working fulltime as a tradie.
If we'd given him a minimum contract and a firstgrade preseason, he'd have been a regular in firstgrade for us.
 
Of all the things to laugh at the Knights about, letting Hosking leave is close to the bottom of the list. There's a reason no other NRL club would give him a development deal let alone top 30 spot.

Played well today but would be just another run of the millc local forward taking up space with little upside.
 
mullenmagic said:
Of all the things to laugh at the Knights about, letting Hosking leave is close to the bottom of the list. There's a reason no other NRL club would give him a development deal let alone top 30 spot.

Played well today but would be just another run of the millc local forward taking up space with little upside.
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True. I remember being surprised he got a run after his one year of under 20s because he was small and not that good - but he has obviously worked his butt off to get up to standard .

You could say the same about Billy Peden, Tony Butterfield and maybe a dozen others who have played 100 games for the Knights though.
 
The thing is, we have guys in our top 30 who look like they’re not up to first grade at all. A fair few of them, in fact. Hosking looked right at home and put in a shift we’d honestly be salivating over if he did it in firsts for us. When is the last time one of our backup players gave us 18 runs for 150+ metres?
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
The thing is, we have guys in our top 30 who look like they’re not up to first grade at all. A fair few of them, in fact. Hosking looked right at home and put in a shift we’d honestly be salivating over if he did it in firsts for us. When is the last time one of our backup players gave us 18 runs for 150+ metres?
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I’m surprised he ran for 150 metres, In his first three or four runs he got driven back 10+ metres each time.
 
He's had one game and played out of his skin....if he does it consistently then yeah ok we let a good player go.

But calm down, it was his debut game and he had a dig...good on him but nothing special.
 
The issue isn’t letting this or that player go. It’s that a player will be in our system and not look very impressive, then they’ll go do a pre-season somewhere else and look ready for first grade when called upon. I would be surprised if I was the only one frustrated by this.
 
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HarVeeGee13 said:
The issue isn’t letting this or that player go. It’s that a player will be in our system and not look very impressive, then they’ll go do a pre-season somewhere else and look ready for first grade when called upon. I would be surprised if I was the only one frustrated by this.
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Your not. Player management is one area where the Knights need to improve.
 
www.newcastleherald.com.au

Former Knights player Zac Hosking to achieve NRL dream with Broncos

The Knights' NSW Cup 2021 player of the year will debut for Brisbane on Sunday.
www.newcastleherald.com.au www.newcastleherald.com.au

In this article Max McKinney says that Hosking was looking at joining a Newcastle RL side and an Unnamed coach convinced him to have one last shot at playing NRL. Both he and his wife quit good jobs and moved to Qld so he could give it his best shot.
I don't know, but it seems very likely the unnamed coach who convinced him to try again would be Andrew Ryan. Ryan coached him in our NSW cup side last year and always sang his praises.
Ryan was a big loss for us. A lot of guys made great progress last year, even though it was a disrupted year.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
The issue isn’t letting this or that player go. It’s that a player will be in our system and not look very impressive, then they’ll go do a pre-season somewhere else and look ready for first grade when called upon. I would be surprised if I was the only one frustrated by this.
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Oh I completely agree, but there is definitely a vibe around the place of the knights would be so much better with a team full of meaneys, kings, kirazs, hoskings etc etc. We tried that in 2016 and won 1 game.
 
Haha yeah I’m definitely not a “LOCAL JUNIORS ONLY IF HE WASN’T BORN IN THE SHADOWS OF MARATHON HE’LL NEVER HAVE PASHUN FOR THE JERSEY” guy. But I do reckon the performance of the worst ten players in your top 30 tells you more about how a club is going than the play of your best 5, and the performance of guys who’ve made their NRL debut under Browny and O’Brien both has left a lot to be desired, with only a handful of exceptions.
 
I guess what I’m saying is I don’t believe Hosking would have been called on to play 80 minutes on the edge on debut if he was still in our system, and I wouldn’t have expected a performance like what he delivered. How much of that is on the Knights as a development club vs how much is just circumstance is a matter for debate.
 
We clearly have an issue with junior development. We have one of the biggest catchment areas in the NRL and haven't produced much this century.

And some juniors we have let go look better, not great but better in other systems.

To be successful this club needs to get a lot better at junior development and club culture.
 
krustykraz said:
We clearly have an issue with junior development. We have one of the biggest catchment areas in the NRL and haven't produced much this century.

And some juniors we have let go look better, not great but better in other systems.

To be successful this club needs to get a lot better at junior development and club culture.
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We've lost half our juniors.
The Roosters came 2nd in Mathews, 1st in Ball and are currently 6 points clear at the top of Flegg - mostly with Central Coast kids who would have been playing for the Knights 10 years ago.
 
Just for a bit of fun, I've put together a team list of some of the since moved on guys that we've brought through in my time and have failed to be developed. Couple of decent what ifs in there. Argument can also be made that they were all pretty average, but it is sad to watch these guys come through in a losing environment year after year.

1. Jake Mamo
2. Cory Denniss
3. Starford To'a
4. Siuatonga Likiliki
5. Chanel Mata'utia
6. Brock Lamb
7. Jack Cogger
8. Kyle O'Donnell
9. Tom Starling
10. Luke Yates
11. Sione Mata'utia
12. Pauli Pauli
13. Adam Clydsdale

14. Danny Levi
15. Constantine Mika
16. Jaelen Feeney
17. Beau Henry
18. Chad Redman
 
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