NRL Round 16 - Knights Vs Dragons - 8:00pm Friday, 19th of June - McDonald Jones Stadium

jamesgould

jamesgould

Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
Staff member
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It's the blockbuster Friday night match! None of this 6pm nonsense. And what could be a better, more exciting and competitive match-up than the high-flying 2026 Knights vs the ... (hold on, wait, they've won how many games this year?!) ... the dead last 1 from 13 Dragons.

Still we will have a few players either backing up from Origin on Wednesday or resting, McEwen is suspended, so maybe, just maybe, it's a much vaunted "danger game!!!"

Please discuss below.
 
I can see it being similar to the first one at the gong, put up a bit of a score first half, coast second half. Dragons have started their last few games well. We don't really want to give them hope.
 
Same side as against Storm last Friday with some possible changes.
Ponga, Lucas, SOO so unavailable, McEwen stood down.
Assume Best and Crossland fit to play.
1 Hunt/Votano. 2 Young, 3 Gagai, 4 Best/Hunt, 5 Marzhew, 6 Sharpe, 7 Brown, 8 JSaf, 9 Crossland, 10 Mooney,
11 ESL, 12 Manuleleua, 13 Croker, 14 Graham/Smith, 15 Frizell, 16 Saulo, 17 Cant, 18 Hopwood 19 Smith/Graham.
Manu played 12 NSWCup Rds 13 & 14.
Only two days between SOO and Rd 16
 
I'd use Cant and Frizz in the second row for the experience.

Jones hasn't set the world on fire in his 2 games of reserves, but he was much better in the second and will have another 2 weeks to get up to fitness, so i think he'll be good for 30 or 40 minutes off the bench in firsts.

Saifiti
Crossland
Mooney
Cant
Frizz
Croker

Graham
Saulo
Hopwood
Jones
Manuleleua
ESL
 
Billy said:
I'd use Cant and Frizz in the second row for the experience.

Jones hasn't set the world on fire in his 2 games of reserves, but he was much better in the second and will have another 2 weeks to get up to fitness, so i think he'll be good for 30 or 40 minutes off the bench in firsts.

Saifiti
Crossland
Mooney
Cant
Frizz
Croker

Graham
Saulo
Hopwood
Jones
Manuleleua
ESL
Click to expand...
With the way we like to attack this year we have to have a good running line backrower and that’s Manu, without him we won’t have any attacking power in our backrowers at all
He has to start
 
Frank McWilliams said:
Same side as against Storm last Friday with some possible changes.
Ponga, Lucas, SOO so unavailable, McEwen stood down.
Assume Best and Crossland fit to play.
1 Hunt/Votano. 2 Young, 3 Gagai, 4 Best/Hunt, 5 Marzhew, 6 Sharpe, 7 Brown, 8 JSaf, 9 Crossland, 10 Mooney,
11 ESL, 12 Manuleleua, 13 Croker, 14 Graham/Smith, 15 Frizell, 16 Saulo, 17 Cant, 18 Hopwood 19 Smith/Graham.
Manu played 12 NSWCup Rds 13 & 14.
Only two days between SOO and Rd 16
Click to expand...

What am I missing here? Why are Ponga and Lucas unavailable?

SOO is played 2 days before so they can backup if they get through fine.
 
JOJO82 said:
What am I missing here? Why are Ponga and Lucas unavailable?

SOO is played 2 days before so they can backup if they get through fine.
[/QUOTE
Assumed they will be rested, might have erred on safe side and injury is also a possibility but if they are fit and right to play that’s great]
Click to expand...
 
Manulelua has earned a starting spot. Him on the right and Cant on the left if Lucas can’t back up. Need Friz in our middle rotation.

Shame Cup have the bye too would like Jones to get another game under the belt if he comes back on the bench for the Dragons game.
 
Easy switch for McEwen with Manu, Jones isn’t apart of our future and is nowhere near the aggressive line running / bending of Manu and ESL, I feel Manu played better than Jones as well.

If Ponga isn’t fit I’d be using Votano as he is a ball playing fullback like Ponga while Hunt is more of a workhorse fullback, so Votano fits the style better, he is a goalkicker which we will need if KP can’t make it and against the Dragons we can see if he is apart of our future or not.

Hunt for me will be sat firmly back in his original spot on the bench for injury cover.
 
ESL has been fantastic in Cup as has Francis. So I'd be having Francis and Can't starting with ESL to give Francis a break.

Votano has responded well from his early season injury and had a baller of a game in CUP. I'd love to see him get a start at FB and give him the confidence to go after the game with the backline sweeps. Hunt is great but really lacks ball playing skills at the back, even though he's done ok there in the past. Votano has also been kicking goals pretty well too.

Realistically, even without KP/Lucas/McEwen knights should be aiming to strengthening their defence for rest of season. and not let Dragons score. We should lap them, and start building on the fore and against, it's looking a lot like P/D is going to be very important to get that home final.
 
Ponga will likely back up

Play Lucas off the bench if required

Best and Smith back and Crossland

Just need to stop the silly errors and hope no decoy runners knock out a defender in the first 5 mins
 
Crossland was in the training pics today, but not doing contact, but that might be part of the head injury protocols (? no contact for 11 days)

He was miked up and at one stage said to someone named Sparrow - no symptons, tick me off.
 
Last edited:
How on earth did this match get scheduled for Friday 8pm?

Regardless, I don’t think this will be quite the drubbing of the previous match up. The refs seem to have put whistle away, so penalties and 6 Agains are down quite a bit since that awful magic round and the scorlines reflect that. Nevertheless, they should still be looking to win well and I’d hope to see a more complete performance, than the last few weeks.

Looking at the stats for the year so far, there’s clearly things to work on. The attack is great, naturally some errors will come with it, but they’re currently making too many and the defence isn’t good enough to withhold the really good teams.

Currently they are:
- 3rd last for possession averaging only 48% per game,
- 3rd last for completion rates at 77%
- 5th for errors
- 3rd Handling errors
- 8th penalties conceded

- 4th for missed tackles
- 4th for ineffective tackles
- 12th Goal kicking only 74%

For just about everything else they’re going really well. If they tidy these things up a bit, I don’t see why they can’t be Top 4. That spot is wide open and their run home isn’t too bad. I think they should be winning 7 or 8 of the next 11 which should do it.
 
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