Ex-Knights Watch

With Canberra first choice hooker out for the season, Tom starling should get his chance.
Tom trained his arse off in the off season and in his one game of reserve grade this year he ran 145 metres, made 48 tackles, 1 try, 1 try assist and 105 fantasy points.
He has been in the raiders 21 for every game this year, so he is clearly ready.
 
luke46 said:
Watching them run out... starling is so small. First time I’ve seen him play.
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I watched him play his first trial game against seniors playing against some titans players in Murwillumbah and the Titans under 20s players were behind me. When the teams were warming up they were all talking about the tiny little hooker and how he was going to get smashed. Long story short, Tom had a blinder, and the guy who wrote up the article on the game mentioned the "grey headed Knights fans" cheering for Tom - which was basically me and a few of the Knights nanas. I did yell a bit when he made a big break and shut up all the Titans naysayers.
 
Channell 9 commentator in this game saw Tom and said "there isn't much of him" and changed his tune when Tom dumped a couple of big forwards in a row.
 
Imagine if we had locked him in at Hooker instead of going on our Levi, kosjacyn, griffin, Watson, Mann, Brailey, McCullough spending spree how much $$$$$ we would have.
 
Tom has 4 wins from 4 games at the raiders.
He went through our 16s, 18s and 20s in champion sides and lost very few games, and even when he played reserve grade for us we had a surprisingly good record when he played.
He then went to the Mounties and won most of his games.
I reckon the little guy has a career winning percentage of about 80%.
 
luke46 said:
Imagine if we had locked him in at Hooker instead of going on our Levi, kosjacyn, griffin, Watson, Mann, Brailey, McCullough spending spree how much $$$$$ we would have.
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It's almost funny how he put in years of outstanding performances through all the grades, got 1 game of firstgrade as a 19 year old, threw one bad pass, and we cut him. But as I always said, if you looked at the size of the guy, you wouldn't waste a top 30 spot on him, so you can't blame our recruitment guys. He just happened to have been recruited to the Knights by Mulholland, who was very happy to pick him up for the Raiders when we cut him.
 
Jack Johns has been named to make his debut for Souths in number 17.
Souths have been using him as a second row.
 
Lefty said:
He seems to have been playing for a long time now.
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He's had a funny career. He didn't start playing seriously till he was 19 and his 2 years with us he was way behind the other guys in some aspects and really good in other aspects because he was training like a firstgrader and doing private coaching with his father. He basically left school and decided to learn how to play footy for a living and put in 100% effort for a few years. This is his 4th year of playing really.
 
I notice Pride Petterson-Robati has made the 21 man squad for Brisbane.
When we won the minor premiership in under 20s under Crawley with guys like Fitz, Sione, Levi, Lamb, Cogger, Tapine etc - i thought our best forward was either Tapine or Petterson-Robati.
Found this youtube clip where he says he gave the game away after a year at Newcastle because "things happened". I was really disappointed when he walked away with a year to go on his contract.
 
Newcastle Herald caught up with former Knights and Panthers lower grades and Former Titans first Grade coach Garth Brennan.

Says he’s doing real estate in Newcastle having been interested In it before as well as owning a few investment properties.

Says he took the Titans job despite knowing how difficult it could be (and warnings from Gus) with previous culture and staff/player turn around.
Says he was disappointed with how it all went down but accepts that’s the nature of the business.
Reading between the lines I think when he took the job he said he wanted a chance to see out his contract regardless of results to be given the full three years to reshape the roster but when the Titans bought in Mal for internal review he felt the writing was on the wall. And the club wanted to speed up the rebuild a bit.

Hinted that he would consider coaching again even if it meant reserves which he said he enjoyed having worked with guys like Cordner and countless successful Panthers juniors which he thought he was good at developing.

Lastly said he wishes Justin Holbrook gets a proper chance there as well and time.
 
How good is Tom Starling going?
Only got 36 minutes off the bench, but 1 try, 1 line break, 1 try assist, 1 line break assist and 25 tackles with 1 missed at 97% efficiency and 58 fantasy points.
He is averaging about 40 minutes and 45 fantasy points a game.
He showed for years with us that he has the motor to play hard for 80 minutes, but Ricky is getting great value from him by playing him for short minutes and he just works his arse off for half a game.
 
danknights said:
Hasn't he cleaned up his hot head. Gee he used to snap like Fitz.
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Almost as bad as Fitz. Fitz is still the only player I've seen throw away the ball with an open tryline so he could punch on with a guy who tried to tackle him high.
 
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