Round 1 2025 Team

Ok, another couple of parts I found odd - Best playing against the Broncos - "there has to be more to it". What else could there possibly be? He was assessed as being fine and really wanted to play in a crucial match. Then blew out the other hamstring. Which he seems to be pretty much 50% chance of doing every match. They were going on like there were some mystical underworld forces at play.

The beard guy goes on about AOB restricting KPP's game and then the guy next to him immediately says how great with the ball Lucas was. 😂
 
AOB made very good calls with Cogger in particular.
It was clear that Cogger wasn't, and never was, a 5/8.
He sent Cogs back to reserve grade with very clear instructions to brush up on organising and team management, then put him in for Hastings and Cogs was playing his game and playing it well - getting better every game in fact.
If we end up not signing Pezet to be our organising half, having Cogs train all off season as a traditional half and let him run the side next year isn't the worst option. He'll get better and better if he gets a whole year to do what he does best.
Not a 5/8 - never was - never will be.
 
jamesgould said:
Yeah I don't think I really disagreed with any of the calls at the time (except as you say, Gamble). It's all well and good to say pick a halves pairing and stick with it, but when nobody is going out there and owning those roles, are you just meant to keep them in there? If AOB did that they'd just be criticising him for sticking with something that wasn't working.

I think he made the best of a bad situation. Aside from another Joey, Kimmorley or Mullen appearing in our juniors, recruitment is the answer to the problem. And we know what an on-going struggle that has been.
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Yep. The halves issue stems from a succession of mistakes in moving on from Pearce rather than being something that first cropped up in 2024 and is entirely attributable to AOB deciding to chop and change the halves for no reason as they’ve portrayed it.

If Jake Clifford had’ve worked out, I’m fairly convinced the club would have gone through with the Luke Brooks pursuit and may very well have ended up playing the exact same system AOB settled on by the end of the season with Brooks in Crossland’s place as the left sided halfback and the key initiator of the shapes we like to run on that edge, and Clifford in Gamble/Cogger’s spot as a right sided five-eighth who in both cases is clearly taking on a lot of the organising and play directing rather than playing a traditional second receiver’s role.

I’m not exactly slashing my wrists over the way things turned out as I’d say Brooksy was good but not great for Manly and wouldn’t raise our ceiling that much, and Clifford mostly improved the Cowboys by not being a speed bump like Chad Townsend is.

But yeah because Clifford didn’t work out, everything went out the window. They decided the solution was moving Ponga to 6 as it would be easier to find a good fullback (maybe? I feel like there’s a pretty comparable number of talented young running 6’s and talented young fullbacks), partnering him with the pure organising halfback the Tigers were looking to punt, and then Miller/Pryce would come in and play 1. In retrospect, maybe investing over $2.5 million in cap space on something we’d never seen in a live game to work out whether it would work was a… slight error.

Probably the wiser thing would have been to get a look at how the attack would work with Gamble and Clune in the halves, both guys who’ve shown themselves to be capable do-a-job guys previously, and then once we had a proof of concept, chasing a marquee half or two, or maybe one marquee guy and a talented young prospect, who fit that system.

If we did that, our halves in round 1 2025 might be something like Brooks and Sexton, or Luai and Gamble. I’m not sure where that would put us as a team in 2025, likely still not a contender, but you’d have to stay it’s a bit more of a stable situation.
 
mozza said:
These guys are insufferable. Rate themselves so highly and their ‘analysis’ is generic and bare bones as it gets. ‘RL Guru’ what a wank.
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I used to enjoy RL Guru. But his analysis has turned to s**t this year. His CBAs are captain obvious takes that a average punter could make.
 
Good Times said:
I don't think Storm re-signing him can be underestimated though, if it's us as the alternative.

He's already settled in Melbourne. He's learning from one of the best coaches the game has known, under the tutelage of Munster, Hughes, Paps and Grant, one of the best spines in the league.

Compare that to us currently:

He knows Newcastle but needs to relocate.
O'Brien is the Wish version of Bellyache.
Our spine is quite weak outside of Ponga.
We have cycled through so, so many halves in recent years. As a half, I'd question whether our system is the right one to flourish in.
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On 1/2 to 1/3 of potential earnings elsewhere and barring injury will feature in 3-4 games of first grade.

Idiot to re-sign.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Yep. The halves issue stems from a succession of mistakes in moving on from Pearce rather than being something that first cropped up in 2024 and is entirely attributable to AOB deciding to chop and change the halves for no reason as they’ve portrayed it.

If Jake Clifford had’ve worked out, I’m fairly convinced the club would have gone through with the Luke Brooks pursuit and may very well have ended up playing the exact same system AOB settled on by the end of the season with Brooks in Crossland’s place as the left sided halfback and the key initiator of the shapes we like to run on that edge, and Clifford in Gamble/Cogger’s spot as a right sided five-eighth who in both cases is clearly taking on a lot of the organising and play directing rather than playing a traditional second receiver’s role.

I’m not exactly slashing my wrists over the way things turned out as I’d say Brooksy was good but not great for Manly and wouldn’t raise our ceiling that much, and Clifford mostly improved the Cowboys by not being a speed bump like Chad Townsend is.

But yeah because Clifford didn’t work out, everything went out the window. They decided the solution was moving Ponga to 6 as it would be easier to find a good fullback (maybe? I feel like there’s a pretty comparable number of talented young running 6’s and talented young fullbacks), partnering him with the pure organising halfback the Tigers were looking to punt, and then Miller/Pryce would come in and play 1. In retrospect, maybe investing over $2.5 million in cap space on something we’d never seen in a live game to work out whether it would work was a… slight error.

Probably the wiser thing would have been to get a look at how the attack would work with Gamble and Clune in the halves, both guys who’ve shown themselves to be capable do-a-job guys previously, and then once we had a proof of concept, chasing a marquee half or two, or maybe one marquee guy and a talented young prospect, who fit that system.

If we did that, our halves in round 1 2025 might be something like Brooks and Sexton, or Luai and Gamble. I’m not sure where that would put us as a team in 2025, likely still not a contender, but you’d have to stay it’s a bit more of a stable situation.
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The Ponga five-eighth thing really has messed us up, and will continue to next season as well. At least with Pearce we can say it somewhat came out of nowhere. The turnover of recruitment staff at the club has had just as bad an effect, I think. The theories and plan seems to totally change every 12 months ... leading to what looks like some very muddled thinking and a roster pulling in two or three different directions. Can only hope POS can stick around and work his magic.
 
jamesgould said:
Ok, another couple of parts I found odd - Best playing against the Broncos - "there has to be more to it". What else could there possibly be? He was assessed as being fine and really wanted to play in a crucial match. Then blew out the other hamstring. Which he seems to be pretty much 50% chance of doing every match. They were going on like there were some mystical underworld forces at play.

The beard guy goes on about AOB restricting KPP's game and then the guy next to him immediately says how great with the ball Lucas was. 😂
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I don't think they even mentioned Ponga being out for more than 1/3 of the season and how that hampered the team. Yet for other teams they mentioned star player injuries.
 
Sheent14 said:
I don't think they even mentioned Ponga being out for more than 1/3 of the season and how that hampered the team. Yet for other teams they mentioned star player injuries.
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Edit: Guru did, but only to highlight how good Ponga is in terms of dally m points, and not at all how that played a part in the knights season.
 
waynesworld said:
Denan Kemp’s takes on Newcastle halves situation never considered that they all were playing really poorly when they got dropped. Think it’s most media to be fair because they rarely come out and smash lower profile players, but Cogger and Hastings were in bad enough form their position in the side became untenable. The only bloke that got dropped harshly was Gamble early in the year.
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Gamble was pretty dog **** to start the year. Remember he put off contract talks to earn a better deal and it looked to backfire because he was putting balls out on the full, got dropped and injured. Miraculously worked out for him in the end though and now he looks to be right in contention for the 6 again.
 
Joshhh said:
Gamble was pretty dog **** to start the year. Remember he put off contract talks to earn a better deal and it looked to backfire because he was putting balls out on the full, got dropped and injured. Miraculously worked out for him in the end though and now he looks to be right in contention for the 6 again.
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They all started slow but Gamble deserved his place in the side over Cogger/Hastings at all points IMO.
 
waynesworld said:
They all started slow but Gamble deserved his place in the side over Cogger/Hastings at all points IMO.
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I think he was a bit of a victim of circumstance, Hastings was going great in NSW Cup after a bad opening two rounds, and there was the weird push from everyone to have Cogger there, and he had only had two games of first grade. Cogger and Gamble clearly wasn't working, so a change needed to be made, and Gamble was the odd man out. As it was, he just missed two games before coming back in.
 
The halves were a **** show and there’s no sugar coating it. Big Willie’s call was pretty on the money now in hindsight. AOB and the halves we have need to get there 💩 together by start of pre-season. We can’t keep doing these poor starts. Happened for the last fews years.

Also everyone mentions the Sharks 💩 record in finals but ours would be almost worse. We have been knocked out first round since AOB tenure. We scraped by Canberra only to be humped by the warriors.
 
I don’t rate Obi particularly highly but it’s hard to lay too much blame on him for our halves. You can’t polish a turd and our 2 best halves one spent a large chunk of the year on the sideline injured and the other one seems to be hated by most of the playing group.

To finish the year well and make the 8 with Cogger (credit to him he improved after his diabolical early season performances) and Crossland (a hooker or utility who isn’t a FG standard halfback) is a testament to his coaching.
 
1st round 2025, not confident anything will change that will affect our starting side, even if we get Pezet he will unlikely be ready/fit so my side based on what we have.
1 Ponga
2 Sharpe
3 Gagai
4 Best
5 Marzhew
6 Gamble
7 Cogger
8 JSaf
9 Brailey
10 Thompson
11 Frizell
12 Lucas
13 Elliott
14 Crosslands
15 Hetherington
16 Croker
17 KPP
No surprises in that lot 1-5 auto pick injury free, 6-7 Cogger is our best of what we have, Hastings Cup or gone, Gamble for now is better than Pryce, 8-13 expect Brailey to stay, Frizell and KPP each way, 14-17 Crosslands is ideal 14 even if Brailey goes and KPP to play right side but Frizell is still very strong and expect Croker to repay his late signing
 
jamesgould said:
Ok, another couple of parts I found odd - Best playing against the Broncos - "there has to be more to it". What else could there possibly be? He was assessed as being fine and really wanted to play in a crucial match. Then blew out the other hamstring. Which he seems to be pretty much 50% chance of doing every match. They were going on like there were some mystical underworld forces at play.

The beard guy goes on about AOB restricting KPP's game and then the guy next to him immediately says how great with the ball Lucas was. 😂
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Maybe Bradman needs to see the same American hamstring specialist the Tommy Turbo saw, which seemed to result in a good outcome.
We need Bradman on the field every week, he makes the Knights look so much more dangerous on both sides of the ball.
 
Frank McWilliams said:
1st round 2025, not confident anything will change that will affect our starting side, even if we get Pezet he will unlikely be ready/fit so my side based on what we have.
1 Ponga
2 Sharpe
3 Gagai
4 Best
5 Marzhew
6 Gamble
7 Cogger
8 JSaf
9 Brailey
10 Thompson
11 Frizell
12 Lucas
13 Elliott
14 Crosslands
15 Hetherington
16 Croker
17 KPP
No surprises in that lot 1-5 auto pick injury free, 6-7 Cogger is our best of what we have, Hastings Cup or gone, Gamble for now is better than Pryce, 8-13 expect Brailey to stay, Frizell and KPP each way, 14-17 Crosslands is ideal 14 even if Brailey goes and KPP to play right side but Frizell is still very strong and expect Croker to repay his late signing
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Not a bad looking side. Maybe with a pre season together cogger and Gamble might gel.
 
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