Finals Week 1 vs Rabbitohs - 7:50pm Friday 11th of September - Allianz Stadium

HarVeeGee13 said:
A starting pack with J Saf, Mooney, Lucas and Manulelua in it, with Hopwood & McEwen coming off the bench, has the chance to be one of the best all round packs in the NRL *starting next year*. No shade on other blokes because you need your workhorses too. But the mix of physicality, work rate, mobility & speed we will have, I really think that's the skeleton of a premiership winning pack. All Niukore, Crouch, Croker or whoever else we have on the field will need to worry about is line speed, contact and effort areas.
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I was thinking about this earlier.

Our bench - once we get some players back, full strength (I wish), could be impressive.

Graham
Smith
Hopwood
McEwen
Crouch
Niukore/Frizz/Saulo

Heard a comment the other week (it was in regards to footy tips haha) but the method was to match up the benches - who wins the bench.

If we don’t win the premiership this year - we have at least had great opportunity to develop Crouch, Hopwood, Graham, Hunt, Manu and Smith into players I want to see on our team sheets.

Holbrook is going to have a few conundrums on who to play where next year - the good kind.
 
Newygirl said:
With McEwen playing in the middle, we’d be an able to have Lucas, Manuleleua and McEwen all in the field at once and that can only be a good thing. All three are fantastic

Add Hopwood, Mooney and JSaf, suddenly we may have one of the most talented, aggressive and best forward packs we’ve ever had
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Aggressive, agile and fast!!
 
It's an astounding turnaround. From "Can Croker really be a starting lock? **** we're in trouble if J Saf gets hurt! Is Mooney really ready to be a starting prop? Wow the drop off after Frizell is really scary." to "Wow the coach has some tough decisions about who to select and leave out. We might have too many forwards who deserve big minutes."

I can forgive the Niukore signing because at the time POS pulled the trigger, we really did look short next year. You look at Cody, Lachie, Francis, Jermaine and Trey five months ago and you think "A lot of potential here but they're likely all going to need time, and with young guys if 3/5 pan out like you hope you're ecstatic." The smart money would not have been on all 5 of them improving somewhere between "a lot" and "an incredible amount" in that time. It just does not happen like that very often.

I don't think we have that middle forward who's like, this is *the guy*, this is the guy the rest of the team gets on the back of, your Payne Haas, Taumalolo, 2016 Andrew Fifita type (I do think Cody has a real chance to reach that level though, or at least a Tino/Tapine sort of level). But if all of these guys come back and they're going as well as they are right now next year - so J Saf & Trey maintain their standards, Cody is as good as he is right now but as a bench forward picking on tired middles, Francis & Jermaine keep their current level, Lachie keeps doing a Josh King impression - we have the cattle to get much easier, safer go forward next year against most teams, and match it with the best packs, causing real unique problems with a really varied mix of body types and running styles. And that's before you factor in any assumed improvement.
 
Les Misérables said:
Bandwagon flop.

Spent the last 10 years sinking the boot into us, even when we were going well. Now that its apparent to any halfwit we're on the brink of something special and long term, Willie changes his tune
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Met both him and Horo at Magic Round this year and chatted to both of them. Guess which one thought we'd make the 8 at that point?
 
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