Kalyn Ponga discussion

DieHard17 said:
The problem is in the salary cap teams generally win by having an abundance of talent coming through/under their value, Ponga at least gets at minimum what he really deserves, perhaps slightly more, which affects the rest of the team and quality we can afford. We sadly can't recruit/don't have enough great players under their worth. Hopefully with POS this changes going forth.
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like POS signing the biggest deal in NRL history?
 
How many games did ponga actually have at 6 each time it was tried? Not enough imo, which makes me question whether you can even call it trying. Pressure built up, head knocks came* and like 6 games in, it's abandoned before it ever had a chance. Should have been given the attitude obe has with Sharpe in that, it may take some time, maybe a whole season, to click but when it does it will be a solid long-term investment. Instead we tried to salvage another lost year just to scrape the 8 year after year and pat ourselves on the back. Except, now here we are again, looking at constant rebuild phases etc etc. Ponga at 6 is best for the team, especially now with Sharpe on the rise. Ponga at 1 but basically playing 6 disrupts any balance in team structure.

Otherwise may as well let him go and bring in Humphries or Wishart and a top tierish forward asap. Love ponga but this is getting ridiculous and embarrassing how much he's been wasted here and yes obe holds alot of the blame for that.

In saying all that, doesn't matter what is happening in the spine of we don't shore up our middle depth first and foremost. Next year looks scary how shallow were gonna be and that's only going to heap pressure on ponga, brown and Sharpe. Media's gonna love us

*Majority of the head knocks resulted from ponga trying to milk penalties and then being pulled from the field. Haven't seen him lay down for a pen in a while now and funnily enough, the hia issue isnt an issue. It wasnt primarily being at 6 that caused the head knocks issue, happened the same at fullback when he was in his milking days so I don't buy that excuse.
 
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EASBay17 said:
They realised that you need to be able to tackle to play 6, the parra game that year when he was at 6 will show you why it was rightly scrapped.
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There are many halves that have struggled in defence, some of them turned out rep quality. Now imagine instead of panicking and scrapping it, it was worked on and the defence developed and supported by the players either side of him until it became second nature. We'd be sitting alot better than we currently are and would have had a better team structure these past few years
 
Saint43 said:
There are many halves that have struggled in defence, some of them turned out rep quality. Now imagine instead of panicking and scrapping it, it was worked on and the defence developed and supported by the players either side of him until it became second nature. We'd be sitting alot better than we currently are and would have had a better team structure these past few years
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While it’s fun to talk about pure hypotheticals it’s just that, Ponga said himself he didn’t like 6, if he didn’t like it he wouldn’t have gotten better he didn’t care for it.

Personally I don’t think he had the quick reaction time needed for 6 mixed in with the super fast thinking to change from your first option and decide if your second and third is better and than make the change all while the defence is gunning for you so you have about a 1-2 seconds to do all this as a 6, from a fullback you have about a 3-7 second time frame since you swing around and create space, it’s also easier to see if players bite on certain players when swinging around as a fullback.

When I went from 6 to 1 I noticed how much easier it is to read the game, I was not some immortal (clearly) but you certainly can notice the difference in time.

KP loves the extra few seconds to see what he should do, when he played 6 he panicked a lot and a lot of plays broke down because he couldn’t think fast enough (not his fault, it’s never been his position) but yeah he didn’t like it so he was never going to get better and since KP has gone on to say that 6 is off the table for him permanently.

But again this is all feeling so like hypotheticals is not wrong or right, so an opinion.
 
Yep playing in the halves in the NRL is deadset one of the hardest things in any pro sport in this country. And it’s only getting harder.

This is why there’s all the hype about Isaiya Katoa, it’s not that he’s actually top tier right now - he isn’t - it’s just that you can see how quick the processing speed is and how naturally good he is at those little subtle things great halves can do to create opportunities, or turn half chances into easy tries. Galvin too. And it’s such a hard thing to scout for.

There are things about playing fullback which are also insanely hard, but it’s mostly around fitness, communication in defence, toughness, etc. But there’s a reason you see heaps of absolute gun fullbacks aged between 19 and 25 and few gun halves that age. If you’ve got electic pace/agility and can throw a nice pass, you’ll get a lot of chances to look good in attack.

Sharpe could deadset be years away from being a consistently good first grade half. You move him back to fullback and he‘ll be elite very quickly. He’s so good at so much of the stuff you want already.

Thinking that maybe it’s conceivable that the best thing for both Newcastle and Kalyn is if be moved on is as much a vote of confidence in Sharpe as it is about anything else. It was unthinkable to let him walk before because how do you replace him? It’s thinkable now because of Fletcher.

And then yeah you can look at signing a half who’s already played a fair bit of footy against men in that position.
 
I do feel that he misses Pryce and would prefer Pryce at 6 and Sharpe back on the wing. Have thought for weeks now that the downwards performance has all been since he left, the team has been going terrible, he had a real buzz and uplifting attitude, very encouraging and uplifting.
 
Interesting point. He definitely did seem like that guy. Like Luai. But unfortunately I don’t think he was quite at NRL FG level.
 
If KP is having a sulk that his mate is back in England then KP can hand the captaincy to someone that deserves it and he can walk away from his massive contract.
 
I don't know what is going on with him at the moment. The Eels first try tonight he was out of position for the Eels kick on our line. In the try replays you can see him walking towards where the ball WA coming down. The last fullback I saw do this for the Knights was Darius Boyd, and he was one lazy sh#t. If KP is as uninterested atm as he looks get rid of him to the chooks. We'll, take Dom, a front rower and still have some change.
 
frankLauda said:
I really think that rib cartilage issue is still effecting Ponga. You can just see the way he goes into contact is more cautious. Hopefully he’s better this week.
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Copped a very good whack to the ribs from addo carr aswell, fully blindsided him and you could tell he was in pain when he was getting up.
 
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