Round 1 2023 Side

cowboyman said:
No one knows how much Klemmer has signed on for at the Tigers. I don’t believe any figures have been released? I do doubt he would be on the same on that contract to what he is on currently.

Jones at centre would get eaten alive by every other centre in the comp. If any of the coaches have thought of that as a possibility they deserve to be fired the moment it leaves their lips in the office or on the training ground.
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Yeh doubt Klein was signed for 800k, probs 650.
 
Battler said:
It hasn't been discussed much but it's our kicking game that concerns me the most. I haven't watched Hastings kicking game closely, but it also doesn't jump out at me as being his strength.
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He's crafty with mid to short range kicks but not a very good long kicking game.
Ponga is obviously in the spin the chocolate wheel territory trying to work out where his will land.
 
slotmachine said:
He's crafty with mid to short range kicks but not a very good long kicking game.
Ponga is obviously in the spin the chocolate wheel territory trying to work out where his will land.
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I'd say this is right re: Hastings. He comes up with the right option usually (without necessarily doing anything brilliant), but he doesn't really have that big booming kick which bails out a poor yardage set in his kit bag. Brooks beat him for kick yardage a lot of weeks simply because it makes more sense for him to take the long kicks, because he puts more mustard on those.

I think he hurt his kicking foot or something around the Dogs game last year and played through it (stopped goalkicking at that point too), so the games before that might be a fairer reflection of how good his boot is.

Definitely KP's kicking game is the biggest concern I have about his positional shift. Hope his distance kicking especially can make some pretty quick strides.

Hastings is really good at moving the ball in yardage sets and extracting an extra ten metres or so with intelligent use of his forwards so in theory we're kicking out of trouble a bit less often.
 
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slotmachine said:
You're missing the point, it shouldn't have been either/or.

Klem is better than everyone is giving him credit for, and Hasting isn't as good as they think either.
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I think your missing the point. No one was underestimating Klems value. And if we had a choice most of us wouldn't wanted to let him go. But for us to get a decent half the decision needed to be made.

A good halve is the most important position on the field, if you don't have someone that can stick to a game plan and steer the side around, then you have what we had this year. Nothing, a rudderless boat.
 
Clifford had a handy boot on him.. such a shame O’Brien coached it out of him.
Has it been confirmed Miller is staying with the Sharks? Or is it just newspaper talk?
 
The fact that we have a competent halfback will give everyone something to fight for when we're coming out of our own end. They'll know if we can get up the field we're a chance of scoring points.

That's why our forwards sucked this year, everyone knew it was a waste of time and pain
 
Oliver said:
I think it was the game against Cronulla where O’Brien instructed Clifford to play it safe in the windy conditions.
Clifford form fell off the cliff from that game onwards.
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Probably a fair call from O'Brien for that game. Not sure how instructing a player to do something in one game is 'coaching it out of him'.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Interesting that no one seems to be including Brodie Jones - myself included, not having a go.

As far as I could tell, he was preferred over Fitz in the back half of the year. For my money he defended better on his edge than others who got a go there except maybe Barnett. Obviously not a star but he can play 80, get through his work, distribute the ball a bit when he needs to… plenty of good teams make use of a player like that in their back row and spend up a bit more on other positions.

I do think the best use of Hetherington from what I’ve seen is in the middle, and we can’t rotate the twins with just Thompson and Croker IMO… we’ll get monstered during their minutes.

8. J Saifiti
9. Brailey
10. D Saifiti
11. Frizell
12. Jones
13. Elliott

14. Mann/Sasagi/Crossland/Gamble
15. Hetherington
16. Thompson
17. Croker/Fitzgibbon

Ideally we’ll pick up a back rower in the coming weeks and make this a moot point, but I’m thinking this might actually be the best use we’ve got of our forward stocks atm.
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Wasn't Fitz injured for the last couple months of the season?

My biggest problem with Jones is that he's probably the least threatening edge in the game and playing an edge that doesn't worry defenders inside Bradman is setting him up to fail while also putting a lot more attention onto Ponga if he does move to 6.

At the very least Fitz can run a decent line (before dropping the ball into contact) and has shown the ability to combine with Ponga well in the past, not that either option is a great one but I think I'd prefer him at this stage for that reason.
 
frankLauda said:
I think your missing the point. No one was underestimating Klems value. And if we had a choice most of us wouldn't wanted to let him go. But for us to get a decent half the decision needed to be made.

A good halve is the most important position on the field, if you don't have someone that can stick to a game plan and steer the side around, then you have what we had this year. Nothing, a rudderless boat.
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That all sounds well and good, shame Hastings isn’t that half at a NRL standard. At least he has never showed he can be over the course of a season in Australia.
 
frankLauda said:
I can't remember how he played in the NRL before he went to England. But in the games he played for the tigers before he go injured he looked like a NRL standard half to me.
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Your expectations must be pretty low then. He had worse numbers than Brooks and lost his spot to said player.
 
frankLauda said:
I can't remember how he played in the NRL before he went to England. But in the games he played for the tigers before he go injured he looked like a NRL standard half to me.
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We don't need Hastings to put our points on. That's Pongas job, and he's as good as anyone taking the ball to the line. All we need from Hastings is organisational tactics, which is a strength of his. And from what we saw of him last year he's about as good at that as many of the better halves in the game, imo.
 
cowboyman said:
Your expectations must be pretty low then. He had worse numbers than Brooks and lost his spot to said player.
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Brooks was getting the "Try assist" but who was setting up the plays and creating space??? Most games I watched Hastings he would throw the second last pass, he doesn't get the official try assist although the try wouldn't have been scored without him.
 
slotmachine said:
He's crafty with mid to short range kicks but not a very good long kicking game.
Ponga is obviously in the spin the chocolate wheel territory trying to work out where his will land.
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Don't forget that we missed Jayden Brailey's kicks from dummy half most of this year.
If he's fit next year, fingers crossed, he can also kick us out of trouble next year; where needed. Once JC lost his mojo & AOB's favour, we certainly had very little options on that front this year.
 
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