NRL Round 7 - Roosters Vs Knights - 2:00pm Sunday, 19th April - Allianz Stadium

This is the healthiest I’ve seen the club in 25 years in terms of juniors and young players. Honestly people we are a season or two away from being a real force in this competition. This is the most upside I’ve seen in our juniors for a very long time. Francis will be huge for us and Hunt hasn’t even reached any where near his potential. If chase butler or one of these guys like hagan can develop into an elite player we will win a comp.
 
Les Misérables said:
Manu really warmed into the match. His defence improved considerably throughout the game. He needs time.

But in all seriousness, why do we utterly fall apart without Frizell and/or Lucas. Wtf is going on? The Broncos finished the game without their two best middles and still competed evenly with the Tigers in the second half.

We have some serious issues that need to be fixed otherwise we'll hardly win another game over the next month. And if JSaf goes down, that's Dragons territory
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Xavier Willison is really good and had a blinder, Riki, Piakura, Jensen, Gosiewski, whatever you might think about guys like that are very experienced, their closest thing to a young developing player Talty is 27 now and had a career best game in that one. And Reyno had an amazing game. They also had their whole premiership calibre backline minus Walsh.

Why did the 2024 Broncos absolutely turn it up when things started going wrong? Back when guys like Willison and Piakura were 21 year olds who’d played 15 games, instead of key players in a premiership win? Why didn’t they just do what the current Broncos who’ve learned what it takes to win a premiership can do?

Call it a cop out if you like but you’re talking about squads in very different positions in terms of the experience & reliability of their players.
 
Agree on mixing up the drop outs. Keep the opposition guessing!

They also need to have a defensive pattern ready on the assumption that one of the opposition takes a clean catch. We were all over the place when Mark N caught that one that he juggled in the in-goal area. Most of the players had already run past the ball and showed very little inclination to get back.
 
All our losses have been by 13+ which is a really concern....if we are going to lose it has to be a close game, teams are just doing it easy against us.
 
Thieves Like Us said:
Agree on mixing up the drop outs. Keep the opposition guessing!

They also need to have a defensive pattern ready on the assumption that one of the opposition takes a clean catch. We were all over the place when Mark N caught that one that he juggled in the in-goal area. Most of the players had already run past the ball and showed very little inclination to get back.
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Agree, they need to be better in both attack and defence for high kicks. A lot of it is just awareness which some players have more than others. But yeah it should be planned for better both ways
 
Vagabond89 said:
This year 13+ is nothing, the number of blow-outs has doubled this year with the rule changes. When you are even a little behind the game, you end up a long way behind on the scoreboard.
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Defence wins premierships, we need to make teams absolutely fight for wins and take it the full 80.
 
Winning is a habit as they say, Newcastle have only recently started learning how to win games and even now we are only just getting that positive culture back in the club, we will get there and i like to think it will happen sooner that we think.
 
Seano said:
They're a young, understrength team coming up against the competition heavyweights. We should be lauding the first half efforts as something to build on, not going off because they couldn't keep that level up for a full 80. They were getting smashed in the first as well. If you look at the tackle counts, they just managed to scramble well to keep them out.
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Agree. First half I posted we had no right to be going in with this lead comparing the two team sheets, second half showed why.

People slashing with the razors need to see we are putting up a very inexperienced pack against a very experience one, we were always going to struggle to match them. Missing some very good players to boot.
 
The thing that was weird about us last year was, when other middling teams had players out their defence would fall apart but they could still score. But for us our attack would go from bad to worse, but for a lot of the season we kept the other team from blowing us out a lot of the season.

My read on that eventually became that what was really happening was that our play style enabled teams to beat us 26-6 without really trying or risking getting hurt, so they gratefully accepted the invitation to do just that. Now teams know we can score they play us like they know they need to kill us to win.
 
We just couldn’t wrestle back momentum and get some decent possession.

I don’t really think Roosters deserved that scoreline. I’m stopping just short of saying they didn’t deserve that win, also. Largely due to our second half effort. I don’t think the Roosters did anything special. Aside from some well executed kicks leading to tries, I think we held them out reasonably well. DCE and Robson lucky we don't care about forward passes anymore. Lots of line balls with a few inching forward.

From a club/long term perspective, it’s exciting to put up that kind of performance with Ponga, Best, Frizz, Lucas all out. Manuleleua getting a start, Hopwood and Hola getting minutes.

From a short term, game itself perspective it was a disappointing second half effort in a game we earned every right to win.

Couple of moments that could have gone our way, and changed things a little bit.

Hunt excellent. Even if that was a ceiling performance (still plenty to improve), I think he gets first dibs at Gagai’s spot.

Manuleleua did well. Some great breaks/runs.

One of Mooney’s better games.

It’s been mentioned a bit but Sharpe was not at his best today. Curious if there’s a bit of a niggle or if it’s a lack of confidence in that knee. Unless he can get his spark back, I think it’s him that makes way for Ponga. To give him some time to get himself right.

I’m gutted that they had some some flukey plays to get back into the game. If they put together something we couldn’t defend, fair play, like those kicks and Rugby union-esque passes mid air. Hats off to them. But that free ball on our try line…

Manuleleua couldn’ve jumped on it. But he’s travelling toward our try line and can see Sharpe there. So decides to shoulder ?Butcher off the ball instead.
Idk if Sharpe copped a horrible bounce, or saw Manuleleua steaming towards him but didn’t put his body on the ball there.
Graham aware he was offside (wasnt aware he was downtown) and didn’t wanna touch it.

In the context of the game, I can see why nobody wanted that ball. They all were odds on to concede another set. But, I kind of think your first instinct needs to be BALL. If we have it, they can’t score.

Anyway. TLDR; I don’t think we went in expecting a win there. But with some great performances, it was very much our game to lose at one point. A bit of disappointment that we let that get away from us.

Edit: Oops, this was long. Sorry.
 
Drop outs. Variety please. I’ve not been in the position, but these guys are talented footy players with a load of power. I’m fully supporting the idea of just absolutely drilling it along the ground towards the 15m mark on sideline. The ball is unpredictable. At least it brings in the knock on, and sideline so they need to make a play at it. Another option that I think I’ve only seen once - to great effect. Was DCE taking a quick drop out and just firing it long while the other team retreated. Obviously it’s handy to get a break and composure again, but once in a while, I’d love to see it.
 
Alot of teams are unable to swing back momentum, the way the game is now the proposed new kickoff rule is starting to look alot more attractive, the game is simply to fast with too much ball in play and we couldnt wrestle it back again as they continuosly rolled through the middle.
It looked like Holbrook identified this pretty quick in the 2nd half by bringing back jsaf and mooney after around 10 minutes, which is alot earlier than i can recall this season.

Instead of the game being largely set for set yardage battles we are getting periods where teams having the ball for 5-10 minutes straight isnt uncommon anymore, and yesturday it felt like we were on the wrong end of it for the most part.
 
slotmachine said:
Thought Brown had a stinker but didn't realise he only made 17 tackles, 7 missed, 3 ineffective until I looked at the stats this morning.
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If you didn't realise while watching the game that means he wasn't as bad as the stats look.

We were completely blown apart through the middle and he was scrambling on that edge to cover. You get enough contact on someone to slow them down but fall off, then someone else completes the tackle, technically that's a missed tackle, but I would argue it's good defence.

Not a lot of cohesion on that edge in D though, but it's hard to point to any one guy and say that's why.
 
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