We just won the spoon

Thanks alot Bulldogs.

I hope we have a 4 phase plan like the government does.....

The Bronx have the bye next week so they’ll move them 4pts clear

No two ways about it…. We deserve the spoon!

T Baz can barely string the same team together with either suspensions or injuries or stupidity harming any sort of cohesion. 

The trick then is having the next batch of good young players coming through.

The Storm have been able to do that for 10+ years.

The trick is, that you keep releasing your production line of players and recruit NRL level players in position your junior systems are weak on.

For example... if canterbury is good at producing good second rowers... you sign your potential players on 3 year deals and when their value goes up and their managers ask for ridiculous money, you show them the door and blood the next guy on 200-300k.

You then focus your SC spend on positions you don't have a production line of juniors in - like hooker or outside backs.

Our problem in the last 10 or so years has been we have held onto our forwards as much as we could and paid stupid money to keep them, when we had a string of adequate replacements in lower grades on peanut money. 

Yet we wouldnt spend a dime on key positions we desperately needed like halves, fullback or centres. This has been our downfall with regards to SC mess. Nothing else.

where to from here?

Outside of the top 6 most sides are beatable.

The spoon does look likely, but the key is to fix our defence.

If we are playing up and in, we need to win the contact and have fast line speed.
Young players were hesitating which we can't afford to do.
Up and in needs fast line speed and no hesitation.

If we stick to that style and teams try to play like DCE, fast line speed gives the opportunity of intercepts. For a 2 on one the winger is better off going for the intercept

BBO should stay in the side, and we should work on defence.

If up and in isn't going to work,  we need to change the system. But I think it is our best bet if we get it right. 

The only way is up.

Tigers are showing the danger of being too passive in defence and changing the system mid--season 

Love the fake crowd booing the Reynolds no try... at Leichhardt....

The pub...

Aggressive defense, you only need to pressure a passer to stop the momentum.

Passive will not work for us, we need numbers in the tackle. 

So you have a 10 year headstart?

In attack, copy Souths, they have a great style.

Well I just witnessed two comical passages of play. Firstly Reynolds being so tricky and keen to display a fvckwit goanna crawl he ran too far in goal and made himself dead-in-goal. The second was the Johnson try in the corner. For a try to be awarded there has to be definate downward pressure on the ball. He had his hand under the ball when he grounded it. That fvckup is squarely on the knucklehead in the bunker.

Problem is the Fwit refs will ‘6 again’ you if your defensive line is too quick… especially when you’ve got that pr1ck Sutton officiating 

We’re seeing what… 1 or 2 close games in an entire round & then watching the rest become blowouts. Souffs up 26-0 at halftime. It’s rubbish the product. 

There is a difference between in side 10 and fast linespeed, not that refs always know the differnce.

We were inside 10 a lot last year.

We also need more size, and speed across the entire sde.

Fvck I am sick to death of watching South’s get away with never playing the ball properly...

Shame we were not playing one of these sides.

I've seen more defensive stops in basketball.

It all comes down to this.

Do you think this Board and execs have the long term plan to bring us back to a club that identifies and developer our own talent both from within our juniors and from without brought to the club at a young age, and has the smarts to execute that plan.

Cause nothing else is gonna work.

 I know John Khoury is held in high regard by some smart people, haven’t a clue about the rest.

So, if you have the faith in them, and you’d probably have a more valid opinion on that than most of us as you pay more attention to those details than most of us, then you just have to have patience for them to deliver.

If you don’t, time to blow the place up and start again… again.

Letting Meaney go was an aggressive move IMO, though probably we didn't let him go, the Storm were a more attractive offer.

We could have played him at fullback from round 1 and signed him earlier.

Regardless we will be able to judge next season, if that was a good decision.

Meaney going tells me to expect a lot of other players are going, and some new players coming in.
We can also expect some young players promoted as part of the top 30 next season.

Overall the coach, board, CEO and recruitment team are putting their cards on the table.

I hope it works, becuase it has to work, if next season is a repeat of this season, I can't see an easy way out. If we blow up the joint again, that might be one time too many.

I think the club have tried to sign players in the positions we lack but haven’t been able to seal the deal. Api Korisau and Latrell are prime examples. We should have offered them more money. That would have given us a great fullback and hooker. We certainly could do better with our recruitment. 

Not overly upset Newsreader is leaving TBH. 

I’m starting to think this long term plan is going to take ten years or more. 

I agree on Harper, I thought so at the time.
He has offered more in attack at Manly than I expected, I originally thought he was agood defender and hard runner with limited attack.

Renouf needs to improve his defence but our side lacks attacking strike, we need his impact in attack.

I think the 3 young guys who debuted are in the frame to be promoted.
All 3 were ok, but the young centre Manu needs a lot of work on his defence.
Promoting young talent on lower wages should mean the signings we make are all quality.

That has to be the formula, I hope that is what we are doing.

We need to sign quality not quantity.

I would setlle for 3-5 top NRL players (in addition to Burton, JAC and Naden) and promote young guys for the rest, I hope we are letting 8-10 go.

Say we are signing 5 more that is 2 high salary name players and 3 solid proven NRL players.
The last 3 are not hard to find.
For the 2 guns, hooker and prop IMO.
The proven NRL players should be 1-2  second rowers and ideally a utility.

They need to find players to fill these roles at a price we can fit into the cap, it isn't easy but we should have the cap space.

We can judge the results, I recon by round 10 next season.
But if we screw up we are looking at 10 years, it will take 3 years just to get back to where we are now.

Look at some of these clubs that were at the bottom end of the ladder… Titans have gone really hard with bolstering their forward pack with quality additions…. Fifita, Tino, now Isaac Lui to go with Wallace, Mo Fo etc. 

But when it comes to the Titans backline… they’ve gone with a number of bargain basement buys/Jr’s to go with AJ Brimson. 

Until we have a quality 7 & 9 we will continue to struggle. It's not the talent of the squad, guys like Harper couldnt get a start ahead of Montoya and Holland. It's the desire, the smarts, the will to win, the ability to dictate terms of the most important players in our team aka our spine. We must get our spine right and get it right as soon as possible. 

We need to get B Smith for next season. Him along with Burton will make a difference. I'd love to see Averillo get a run at fullback because I don't think Allen is good enough. That would leave Wakeham to partner Burton in the halves. That might be the best we can do for 2022 and then we reassess based on how Averillo goes at fullback and whether Burton can handle being the goto playmaker.

I tend to agree with Doc who mentioned the other day that we should (Shirley) have plenty more $$$$ to spend for 2022 especially as big earners Napa, Floppa are off our books & DWZ to an extent too.

I would be happy with two big name players. Eg Smith and Haas. And promoting juniors to fill the remaining positions. Throw big money at the next big name in a position the juniors aren’t strong as Marki suggests and we could be in for a quick rebuild.