I think that the Tigers might be an outside chance of rolling Manly.  I would love to see that.

They are a young side lacking confidence and making a lot of poor decisions.  One win might be enough to give them some energy and confidence, especially if Manly turns up expecting an easy game.

Manly will switch on the Tigers need to show some grit and energy. Not likely but I think it may be possible. 

Even if we drop back a bit next season compared to this season that is no reason to panic. I don't expect that in fact I expect opposite, but there are variables.

The NRL are prone to tweaking the rules, some changes which slow the game down could make us less effective. 

Or injuries might derail the season, no club is totally immune to that.

Even Bellamy,  Bennett and Cleary don't have success every season. 

But the formula Gus is working on is long term success essentially making the 8 most years.

In reality the NRL coach is just one part of a wider team,. 

I have some doubts about Baz, but with our current set up and the right assistant coaches Dymock and Pay might have had some success. 

Dymock was a smart attack minded coach who had a good relationship with players.  He would need assistants who understood defence. 

Pay was perhaps limited as a tactian and not great on team selection,  but he didn't have much talent to work with. He would definitely need smart assistants and he would need to be smart enough to listen to them. A lot to learn, but fundamentally a good bloke who might have been ok , with a lot of assistance from Gus and others.

Going back further Kevin Moore and others build the 2012 side with smart recruitment. 

Mary Barra personally doesn't design and build all of the cars at GM. 

At the end of the day an NRL coach is just one part of the team, that is why sacking a coach when the rest of the team isn't up to scratch never works.

Cirro has been smart enough to recruit good assistants,  but that wasn't obvious last year.  

One season is nowhere near long enough for a coach to turn a joint around.

I doubt that any coach could have won with the team Pay had.

In the Baz era, some of our recruitment and retention decisions were way off. I don't know who is to blame for that.

I really hope you are right. And I think you might be. From what I have seen and heard we are on a very upwards trend. 

That’s again a massive stretch. I didn’t predict we would have a bad year. I just stated that I can’t guarantee we will have as good a year. 

Out of context. You are the king. 

I think its an unfair comparison as one club is on the way back to the fold and losing a heap of good first grade players while the other is on the way up with what seems ro be little first team roster change.

That said, i would still think the vast amount of people would predict Panthers will be ahead of Dogs next year. 

Id like to think so....
I remember the mid 90's in my teenage years where i use to think we had the best administration in the game and that we could recover from bottom of table quicker than any other club.

I was never a fan of Gus's comments that it would take alot more time to get back to where we should be. Give anyone multiple years to recover a club and guess what.....they will. 

I honestly think even Gus is impressed with our performance and resurgence this year, and its beyond even HIS expectations after last year.

Sometimes you shuffle the deck chairs and things work out. Other times, you dont have to shuffle at all.

I believe CC and Gus came into this year with a plan, and it has turned out better than they would have expected. 

How we finish this year will probably determine if they just tweak things next year or continue with whatever their longer term plan is/was.

I think it was pretty clear that if someone is "not confident" in something from happening, it means they have reservations.  Thats pretty cautious to me and far from definitive.

I cant make any predictions at this time. I'm just riding the wave. I'll let you know if i make one, and you can record it and revisit next year.

And Panthers and to a lesser extent the Warriors have that development system.

Gus set it up at both places.

Broncos- all of QLD was their development system in a past era. With more QLD clubs it will be interesting to see how they go.

Storm - very good scouting and development via QLD cup. Buy players and improve them.

Roosters - do a lot of everything and splash the cash.

I like the formula of scouting and developing players, most of our great players over the years came from that formula.

We have also stolen the Panthers wrestling coach.

Going to be interesting from here to see how good Cleary and CC really are.  Panthers still have a pipeline of good young talent and the club is an attractive destination. 

My view is around the start of 2025 we can call the Dogs and Panthers as roughly equal in terms of playing talent, though Panthers still have a stronger squad and definitely more experience.  Will Cleary finish higher on the comp table than CC in 2025?

My money is on the Dogs in 2025, but I am not overly confident. 

Yes, I also noticed the comments Gus made about medical,  strength and conditioning and coaching.

It also seems like our side has done some work on the mental side of the game. Sexton admitted that was one of the things that he was working on.

So the system involves bring young players into the NRL when they are mentally and physically ready, know their role, have the necessary skills and stick to the system. We want players we develop to have a long NRL career, not an early NRL career.

It is probably a 5-7 year program all up and we may be in year 2.  So for the next few years players making their NRL debut should be increasingly well prepared. 

According to Mase players were tested to see if they were ready in that era, but it was essentially sink or swim. Now it seems to be more scientific if we have put years into developing a young guy,  we want to give him every chance.

And we didn't have all of this before Gus got here.

Gus is looking 2-3 years down the track, players and coaches are responsible for short term results.

We do have lots of great talent in the lower grades.  And when a young kid and their parents talk to Gus he can honestly say the system here is on par with the best. Give them a tour of the centre of excellence, let them meet medical,  conditioning and coaching staff.  If we want that young kid play 4-5 years in the lower grades followed by 10-15;years NRL take the time and show them the system.  All parents want their kid in the best system with the highest chance of success.

So we probably are not going on a spending spree to buy players for 2025.

And that prediction is…

… going forward, for the next half to full decade and beyond - we are now one of the big four. Top four finishers more often than not. Premierships will either come or not with that, but we’ll be giving ourselves as good a chance as any and better than most like constant top four finishers always do.

Easts and Melbourne’s have been in The Big Four for 20 years, Panthers half a dozen or so and I expect them to still be there or thereabouts for the foreseeable future (Easts may have a poor season or two coming up during a rebuild). Other teams have been in and out, Souths notably. The Lemons though they always seemed imposters, Broncs flirted and may come back or not, Cronulla sort of but never seeming genuine.

Anyway, the reason I feel so confident to make such a prediction.

Gus does tell fibs and outright lie at times, but it’s usually to serve a purpose for the greater good. But one thing he has never done is lie to pump up our tyres. He never gave false hope, in fact at times he’s sounded as pessimistic as Marki. How many times did he tell us it would take years to get out of this mess. Remember he told Cirro he’d be better doing an extra year at Penrith to win another comp because there was no joy waiting for him here last year.

He’s constantly kept our expectations low.

But just the other night he said we now have the best coaching, the best high performance and the best medical in the game.

Now I know Marki’s gonna say “But.. but.. CLEARY!” But Gus did clarify that others are and will try to be equal, but none are or will ever be better.

And he doubled down by saying this is not just in The NRL squad, it’s through all grades right down to junior pathways. He reiterated that juniors coming into the Bulldogs system will receive the best coaching, the best high performance and the best medical in the game from day one.

And he saying that this is all in place NOW.

He pointed to the High Performance and Academy that will be built at Belmore next year as one of the cornerstones of our future plans.

So yeah, I’m optimistic.

Other teams may force there way into The Big Four, but it won’t be at our expense long term. We’ll have our odd bad years, sure. But they’ll be because of reasons largely out of our control like injuries, inexplicable losses of form and really a thousand other things that can go wrong.

But they will never be because of the management, the culture, the professionalism, the staff or the vision of the club again.

We have reached benchmark and will stay there for a long time.

Well how would you put it?…. Now you want to clarify it.

The word “not” as in “not confident” is not ambiguous, it’s definitive - is it not? If you were trying to convey caution, would you not use a different word?

So you tell me what you think Micko was trying to convey and what you were agreeing with. I think you knew at the time and you don’t know how to make it seem different now.

as for me seeking praise for my predictive abilities, yes I’ve always given a flying’ f*** about that sort of sh.t, must be obvious. It would help though if my prediction in regards to the subject under discussion were… you know… right.

But! I will take it!

And coming next, make an actual prediction. Definitive, no ambiguity. So you can take me to task on it and praise or condemn me if I’m proved right or wrong… over the coming years.

The quote is due to the fact that props ate more likely to be injured or suspended.

What is now different is that props are less likely to be suspended these days.

As for injured, Sutton,  Tood, Patolo and Fifita have been injured  for most of the season. King and Curran have had to play many games with injury. Knight doesn't seem to be in the mix but has also been injured.

Farmer is  the only other big body who has been available most of the year..

We also have good young players coming through Todd,  Hopoi,  Underhill,  and in a few years Marshall and the NSW under 20s origin prop who is a gun.

Tetevano and Knight going, Farmer probably going. Patolo 50-50 but might be extended 1 year.

RCG probably 2 years, but that time our young guys are ready.

If the ESL reports on Amone are true. 8 RCG 10. Amone 13 King  Bench: Curran, Hughes, Mann, Hayward.

We don't need to worry about players getting opportunities.  Injuries,  HIAs, suspensions and possibly rep duties will create opportunities.

Bigger guys need to be fit enough and mobile enough to play our style of defence.

I think that quote from Bullfrog is outdated in modern rugby league and needs to change to "when you have too many middles, sign a couple more"

Although i may have exaggerated in the past by calling for 13 fullbacks to make a team, and dismissed size in forwards in favour of any player that is willing to play in the middle, it seems i wasn't far from what CC have Gus have done this year.

They have shown that big forwards in the middle dont trump the need for middles that can handle the workload. We still dont make as many metres as many other teams from our sets but we can still win the territory battle through other means.

The days of the large props are numbered. Few can maintain the levels of fitness needed to play in the middle. 6-agains and less stoppages from scrums etc have killed them off

Pretty rich of you to take that quote and remove it from the "caution" category and put it into the "predict" category.

Even richer of you to quote me in it also, and isolate one sentence when i was agreeing with a number of points in a long Micko post.

But you do what you need to to suit your narrative.

Always felt his size and intimidation factor were key attributes of his. I believe he is a player that can handle the modern game in the middle and be a pack leader.

But as is the case with most forwards at back end of their careers, i wouldn't sign him for more than 500-600k and certainly not for more than 2 years.

I just dont see the benefit why we still sign up guys for 3 or 4 years in their latter years. Too risky for mine these longer deals.

Good post and conveys exactly what I've been trying to say.

I'll go one better and say that when CC was hired by Gus, i expected us to be playing finals in his second year as coach, given the recruitment spree and profile of players we had signed in the last 2 years.

Now last year was a disaster, which makes this year look a while lot better, but realistically its about where i expected us to be when we hired CC and all these players. 

I'll admit that after last years debacle, i never imagined CC could get us to improve this much in the one year, and hats off to him. 

Would be great if it continues or he can even improve further next year. History tells me its not a given and me being a pessimist, i prefer to keep my hopes in check rather than get crushed again (if it happens). 

So I'll just ride this years wave for now and keave it at that. 

I suspect Zef is looking for some praise for perhaps predicting some sort of revival this year. So he sticks the boot into anyone that had doubts. Its OK Zef, well done for predicting it and jumping on the CC train before us. You can have the front seat.

As Bullfrog used to say, when you have too many props sign a couple more. 

I am hearing great things about Tom Amone,  speed,  footwork, size, passing, best prop in the ESL by some distance.

But I also wonder what the standard is in that comp.

Reg definitely has the size and he used to have the motor to play long minutes. 

Give me a choice between Payne Hass and Reg, I'll take Reg.

Hass racks up great stats but rarely changes the result of a game.

Reg needs to be able to play our defensive system, but he has shown in the past that he can do that. 

I guess that it depends on how much cap space we have spare, hooker is the other area that we need to strengthen, not sold on Turpin.

If you listen to Mase, Ogre and Roy often took runs 1 and 2. Mase took run 3.

Most surprising thing about our side is that we rarely have 2 big props to take runs 1 and 2.

We should not go overboard in recruitment for next season,  but I am happy to spend all of the cap, if we get players who might make q difference at the business end. 

Oh, I’m sorry did I misquote you?

So when you wrote “I’m very happy Ciro has done so well. I’m just not confident in him continuing to do so.” - You weren’t referring to next year?

Were you referring to the rest of this year? Or maybe this weekend? or maybe we’ll do well next year but the year after that….

I’m happy to be corrected, so when did you mean?

Poor coaching decisions that have us placed better than you’d thought we’d be, better than I thought we’d be, better than anyone thought we’d be?

Have you considered that maybe your ideas are the poor coaching decisions?

Actually, more than maybe.

Anyway. RCG. Any takers?

personally I think we could get a lot out of him. Very good prop if we could get him cheap enough 

When did I predict we would have a bad year next year?

Love the Fonz. I don’t think I could rock that look these days. Too many grey hairs. lol. 

A mixture of things. Past poor results. Past poor recruitment. Past board decisions. 

You and Micko didn’t express caution, you both predicted we’re gonna have a bad year next year.

And based on what?

Palooka voodoo.

There’s nothing of substance you can point to, or are willing to point to, based on performance, the coaching, the team, the club, recruitment or retention.

It’s just the vibe.

Important game for us this week.

Good practice for an away semi-final.

The Warriors will be up for it, the crowd should be large and hostile. 

Max King back in the extended squad. 

Plenty of time in the offseason to discuss next season. 

This time last year you were trying to convince BDP that you had, had enough of the Dogs and was ready to walk away. This year the team is playing much better than they have in years, they have the fans excited and yet here you are playing it down like it's some sort of fluke, a gitch in the matrix and next year we will revert to shitdom. Gus and Cirro culled all the players that were incapable or unwilling to buy into the system. Maybe some "fans" should have been subjected to the same offer.

Get yer Palooka outfit sorted....