Round 1 2025 Team

A good mate of mine is an assistant coach at a current bottom 8 club. We were talking about the Knights and the halves situation. I walked him through the detail as I see it and his response was fairly black and white.

'AOB hand picked each and every half that has come to the club. The blame for our halves situation falls squarely with AOB'

My first thought was, that's a very coachy view to take, that full responsibility falls on the coach irrespective of the circumstances that have plagued our halves over the last 4 seasons. But thinking more about his answer made me think that maybe he is right. Why are we making excuses for failure? Because that's all it is. AOB has continued to fail the rest of the team by failing to replace Pearce. And at the end of the day it is his fault that none of the previous guys worked out. If it's not the coaches fault, who's fault is it?
 
Les Misérables said:
A good mate of mine is an assistant coach at a current bottom 8 club. We were talking about the Knights and the halves situation. I walked him through the detail as I see it and his response was fairly black and white.

'AOB hand picked each and every half that has come to the club. The blame for our halves situation falls squarely with AOB'

My first thought was, that's a very coachy view to take, that full responsibility falls on the coach irrespective of the circumstances that have plagued our halves over the last 4 seasons. But thinking more about his answer made me think that maybe he is right. Why are we making excuses for failure? Because that's all it is. AOB has continued to fail the rest of the team by failing to replace Pearce. And at the end of the day it is his fault that none of the previous guys worked out. If it's not the coaches fault, who's fault is it?
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AOB liked to claim he had no input to recruitment, but Zammit was the first guy he got appointed and was one of his old friends and team mates.
Really, AOB has had massive input up till POS was brought in to replace Zammit.
 
Les Misérables said:
A good mate of mine is an assistant coach at a current bottom 8 club. We were talking about the Knights and the halves situation. I walked him through the detail as I see it and his response was fairly black and white.

'AOB hand picked each and every half that has come to the club. The blame for our halves situation falls squarely with AOB'

My first thought was, that's a very coachy view to take, that full responsibility falls on the coach irrespective of the circumstances that have plagued our halves over the last 4 seasons. But thinking more about his answer made me think that maybe he is right. Why are we making excuses for failure? Because that's all it is. AOB has continued to fail the rest of the team by failing to replace Pearce. And at the end of the day it is his fault that none of the previous guys worked out. If it's not the coaches fault, who's fault is it?
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I mean, your mate is wrong. AOB got talked into signing Hastings by Peter Parr, for a start. We have that straight from Jacko’s mouth. AOB always wanted Brooks. Make up your own mind about how you feel about that.

He has to wear the blame for some ****. Moving KP to 6 was something he and Kalyn cooked up. I believe Adam Clune and Jack Cogger are both AOB captain’s picks, but both were intended to be depth signings and I actually don’t think we have much to complain about there. He nixed the Jamal Fogarty signing with it all done bar Jamal putting pen to paper, because he didn’t want his first act as head coach to be sending a message to guys like Phoenix Crossland that he didn’t believe in him.

I don’t know what his input was into signing Clifford, if it was him pushing for Jake, but that signing was at least clearly a response to realising that we wanted to pair a genuine half with Pearce after we saw how much better he played with Blake Green at 6, and I’ll put my hand up and say I thought it was a good signing at the time. But that was a pretty widely held belief, especially with how well Jake started with us. Who knows what happened after that but i guess if they had their time over again they would have let him out of his deal when he tried to backflip - clearly, at the end of the day, he never actually wanted to leave North Queensland.

But Jonah Pezet leaving the club had nothing to do with him, and the club’s failure to bring in even one promising genuine #7 prospect in four years to replace Jonah beggars belief and has absolutely nothing to do with the head coach, who has better things to do than sit around watching Ethan Sanders SG Ball tape.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
and the club’s failure to bring in even one promising genuine #7 prospect in four years to replace Jonah beggars belief and has absolutely nothing to do with the head coach, who has better things to do than sit around watching Ethan Sanders SG Ball tape.
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That Ryan Rivett and another guy in Flegg whose name I can't recall were both hoped to be like for like replacements for Jonah. They were both quality playmakers, but neither could tackle at all.
 
Les Misérables said:
A good mate of mine is an assistant coach at a current bottom 8 club. We were talking about the Knights and the halves situation. I walked him through the detail as I see it and his response was fairly black and white.

'AOB hand picked each and every half that has come to the club. The blame for our halves situation falls squarely with AOB'

My first thought was, that's a very coachy view to take, that full responsibility falls on the coach irrespective of the circumstances that have plagued our halves over the last 4 seasons. But thinking more about his answer made me think that maybe he is right. Why are we making excuses for failure? Because that's all it is. AOB has continued to fail the rest of the team by failing to replace Pearce. And at the end of the day it is his fault that none of the previous guys worked out. If it's not the coaches fault, who's fault is it?
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I'm still anti O'Brien.
With Ponga we should be doing better with a better game plan.
If I was a player being pursued by the Knights, I'd be turned off by him.
 
Well anyway. When O’Sullivan is at your club, that’s a situation comparable only to Easts and Uncle Nick in terms of how little relative input the coach will have.

Peter will pick the players, Peter will pitch Parr and AOB on them, Peter will pitch the player on the club, and I’d be surprised if AOB’s input will extend beyond simply having a sit down with them to conclude whether he thinks they’re a good kid or not (which, incidentally, was his role re: Will and Kai, as far as I’m aware).

I’m sure most will be happy with that, but I’ll say this: it is absolutely plausible that O’Sullivan is considering signing Lachlan Ilias.

Lachie was legitimately considered a prodigy in lower grades, he wasn’t some bum off the street. If O’Sullivan liked him as a prospect then, how Lachie has played at Souths will not bother him one iota. He’ll simply conclude Souths are using him wrong, and he’ll pitch AOB on how what he can do can be incorporated into our playing style. This was the approach when he picked up Luke Keary for what turned out to be a song, and let me tell you, Roosters fans wanted him and Robbo hung from a lamp post by their nuts when they made that signing. I’ve thought about it and I think it’s extremely plausible that he’d think he could strike gold again.

AOB won’t take much convincing - a few clips of Lachie ironing out back rowers and putting in the same end over end bomb to the winger on the ten metre line over and over, and the only reason he’d delay signing off on it is he’d be too busy trying to find his hand moisturiser.
 
Comparing Keary and Ilias is a stretch. Keary had always looked a class player. Ilias is close to if not the worst halfback in the NRL.
 
Some players underperform at a particular club for various reasons and they move elsewhere and perform well. It maybe that something at Souths has been affecting his performance there. I don’t know, he may just need a change of club.
 
mozza said:
Comparing Keary and Ilias is a stretch. Keary had always looked a class player. Ilias is close to if not the worst halfback in the NRL.
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Keary had always looked like a class player. And he was playing absolutely awful footy and looked like he was going to flame out before he signed with the Roosters. Two things can be true.

It’s also true that the wraps on Lachie were huge. Souths legitimately thought he was going to be an upgrade on Reyno. And it’s a widely held perception that there’s still a very good first grader in there.

Do I agree with that? No, not really. I think Ilias is a guy who doesn’t read the game well enough to play halfback and should actually consider playing hooker. All I’m saying is that I suspect there’s something to the link. Not that it’s what I want.
 
I never saw him in the lower grades so I can’t comment on what type of prospect he was. He’s been trash at NRL level though. Dean Hawkins looked better at 7 this season and he’s a park footballer at best.
 
Lefty said:
Some players underperform at a particular club for various reasons and they move elsewhere and perform well. It maybe that something at Souths has been affecting his performance there. I don’t know, he may just need a change of club.
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The thing which has stood out since Reyno left is just how limited Cody Walker’s game is in a lot of ways. I always thought Cody was underpaid (I don’t think he has ever gotten more than $700K a year) but it turns out that maybe the bloke has just always known he’s on a good wicket there.

They ended up settling on Cody playing halfback as their solution to the **** sandwich they’ve made for themselves, and wow. He really needs a player like Reyno by his side.
 
mozza said:
I never saw him in the lower grades so I can’t comment on what type of prospect he was. He’s been trash at NRL level though. Dean Hawkins looked better at 7 this season and he’s a park footballer at best.
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Nah no way, Hawkins was way worse. Makes Cogger look like Cleary.

The funny thing I’ve heard about lower grades Ilias is that he was actually a five-eighth for most of his time in juniors. So when you add in injury + no Reggie’s due to COVID affecting his development (so, he barely played any footy in 2020-21), he’d actually played very little halfback by the time he was being handed the job of *checks notes* his club’s longest serving halfback ever 😬
 
Yeah Clune got an offer to make a good living in the Super League. An amount of money we would have been irresponsible to pay because he just isn’t a long term week to week NRL first grade half. It’s fine.
 
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