Tyson Gamble

On AOB, if we give him the pre-season, and see how we go after 5 games I think. If we haven't shown any improvement he's gotta go. The thing with AOB when we signed him, I would argue he had a good roster. Yeah, we scraped into the finals, but you could see we still weren't a consistent team.

And now the wheels have completely fallen off. I don't know. If it was me I think he should be replaced this year. But, hopefully, we are all pleasantly surprised early season, and it paid off sticking with him. Time will only tell.
 
I can't say I've watched a lot of Gamble, but from what I read he has a drive and wants to win, isn't afraid to give his team mates a rev up. A real competitor.

Sounds like exactly the type of player we need. Has to at least be as good as Clune and our other options I guess.
 
Captain Planet said:
Will the Gamble pay off 😆
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My prediction is he will get plenty of love in the first couple of games he plays (like Clune, I remember all the comments at the start of the year saying how we clearly didn't miss Pearce etc) as the shiny new toy, but then the love will fade quickly as people realise he really doesn't have any of the skills you want from a half.
 
The theme with our signings so far - Gamble, Hetherington and Elliot - is that they all have a go.
We probably haven't had a real effort player since Nathan Ross - unless you count Klem I suppose, or Mitch Barnett when he was fit.

Like Nathan Ross, even if he isn't a great player, the fans will back him if it's clear that he is having a crack every game, and that's the standout quality Gamble has - he rips in and backs himself to an almost delusional level.
 
I'll say this, if we got Gamble while Pearce was still here, that would have helped both Pearce and Ponga's games.

Instead we saddled them with Watson and Mann at 6. Non-halves.

It took a desperation move in an injury crisis & a club wanting to move their veteran half on to make time for a youngster, for us to finally get a guy in at 6 who's an actual half, and over the two games before Blake Green did his ACL, Ponga put up Tom Trbjoevic-like video game stats, freed from the burden of doing anything but play fullback. Finally the club seemed to wake up to the idea that both the halves should be actual halves, and then went after Clifford.

6 was such a massive problem for us the entire time Pearce was here and the cap seemed to be ****ed so we needed to either get lucky (i.e. with Green) or pick up a fringe first grader and hope that he was good enough to just make things a bit easier on the 7 & 1 - there was no prospect of signing any sort of elite 6, apparently.

A solution did pop up though. We basically had Jamal Fogarty signed, sealed and delivered and then AOB overruled that when he arrived due to some dumbass thing of wanting to "back the players we already had" - probably the worst single mistake of his tenure. Fogarty isn't great but would have been able to provide something closer to what Blake Green did (he would have outplayed Clifford), and has proved himself to be consistent and driven and would be playing 7 for us right now if he was with us. Canberra is 5-6 without Fogarty this year and 9-4 with him.

Gamble isn't as good as Blake Green obviously, likely not as good as Fogarty, but he's outplayed Clifford over the last 2 years despite not having the same talent and will be able to provide decent support for a good halfback or five-eighth if we can find one.

That's a big IF though.
 
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frankLauda said:
On AOB, if we give him the pre-season, and see how we go after 5 games I think. If we haven't shown any improvement he's gotta go. The thing with AOB when we signed him, I would argue he had a good roster. Yeah, we scraped into the finals, but you could see we still weren't a consistent team.

And now the wheels have completely fallen off. I don't know. If it was me I think he should be replaced this year. But, hopefully, we are all pleasantly surprised early season, and it paid off sticking with him. Time will only tell.
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It frustrates me no end reading headlines saying “AOB is ready to rebuild the side” or whatever … umm - it’s because of you we need a rebuild!!! We had years of that before you got here and you’ve undone it all!
 
Billy said:
The theme with our signings so far - Gamble, Hetherington and Elliot - is that they all have a go.
We probably haven't had a real effort player since Nathan Ross - unless you count Klem I suppose, or Mitch Barnett when he was fit.

Like Nathan Ross, even if he isn't a great player, the fans will back him if it's clear that he is having a crack every game, and that's the standout quality Gamble has - he rips in and backs himself to an almost delusional level.
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Kurt Mann is an effort player. Just not very good.

Its why OB keeps him.
 
packo said:
The game is going away from toilers. Our recent signings would have been great 15 years ago. You need to win the ruck quickly. Simple.
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Such a basic but true insight. All the games we we've won this year we've won the ruck. And watching a team like the Roosters, their turn around took place when their forwards started dominating the middle of the park. It might seem obvious that winning the ruck leads to winning on the scoreboard but it is especially true currently.
 
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