* list * 

Any thoughts on Luke Thompson?

The souths fans that were talking about it the other day (that know more about their sides depth than I do) were very concerned about it. It fits with what I saw of souths struggling in the middle a lot in '19. They've lost a lot of experience in the forwards for this year - Sutton, 2 Burgs, Turner & Britt, with bugger all to replace them. 

I'm not surprised souths are keen to get Jai early, which would barely mask the problem at times, but all they've done is offer the titans a winger for compensation, so it's no wonder the titans sent souths a thank you card with 3 subtle letters scrawled with a sky blue crayon - ggf. 
I thought it was quite funny souths would even try that. It's insulting to the titans & I doubt they'll get any favors out of the titans now. It doesn't mean souths wont get their way, just that they'll have to do it a more sleazy way, nude photos of Mal Meninga etc.

The way things are shaping up, I am losing interest with 2020 even before a football is kicked. The Souffs wankfest is quite evident and I am interested to see if any teams are going to get a fair contest when they come up against "Rusty's rorters".

im with you O D F , i feel the same way ,i look @ whom the bulldogs bought for 2020 season & its pretty much same side as last year barr joe simpson he may make the starting side  for  elliett maybe , but when you lose your most expensive player in foran our halfs are very inexperiened ,i like our forwards i have no problems with them i like our bench with guys like ssue, britt, kaota the penrith hooker, tooamage, f mariner, but our halfs are going to hurt us 

on the nbn i put my mobile on wi fi & on the apple store sownloaded the speed app teat app man i did the speed test & with telstra im pushing  94.5 speed downloads & 34.5 speeds uploads its as fast as you can get 

That's very good. You must be on a FTTP connection or have a node outside your house. The majority of people aren't so fortunate.

Doing the speed test next to the modem/router isn't a fair indication of how it WIFI's your whole house though. If you get a chance, try it from the other end of your house behind some closed doors & walls or upstairs or downstairs from the modem/router, then you'll see what Marki is going through trying to cover different rooms & levels of his place.

Although the loss of Foran is a huge blow for us, I feel that between Lewis, Cogger and Wakeham these blokes will give us great service. I believe we will travel much better than the so called experts have rated us.

He's an experienced young prop in ESL & gets a lot of good hype. There were rumours Canterbury were trying to get him signed, not sure if it was for this year or next year or if there's any truth in it. Haven't seen much of him to really comment though. Others might've heard more.   

Yep, I'm not giving up on the season before a ball is kicked...

In sport I've seen cases many times where the same group of players with a new coach or manager play much better and discover reserves of energy they didn't seem to pave previously.

Also how only 1-2 young players can change a side, the last time this happened for us was Matt Utai being promoted to first grade and making a big difference... so they main questions are what is a side lacking? and who can add it?...

For the Dogs under Pay we have yet to start a season well, and that is mostly losing the physical battle and leaking too many points early in the season..... and last year it seemed like the team was not on the same page as the coach for the first 4-10 weeks...

We finished 2019 playing with more purpose, energy and resolve with a happy group of united players on the same page as the coach, if we start 2020 with the same mindset we may go better.... Most seasons there are close early season games that can go either way, we lost all of those in 2019, and were flogged at other times, it doesn't take much to turn the close games, and avoiding floggings is all about turning up  energised and fully committed...

To be clear I don't think we can win the comp this year, that isn't what this season is about... I'm hoping to finish 8-10 with the team improving and looking like contenders for 2021. 

I'll be tuning out of the Roosters/Souths wankfest .... suffice it to say if either of these teams are playing the Eels, Dragons or Manly I'll be hoping both sides lose ...
If the GF features these 2 teams, I will not bother watching...

Lucky I built a brick veneer house where I can hear snoring from the next room. Imagine it was a double brick house with rendered brick internal walls!

I'd be getting 0.2Mb/s!!!

I don't think any of us (other than maybe Tony) are writing the season off, I just hope we dont collectively write the season off with 8 rounds still remaining. We shouldnt be - not after the last 2 seasons.

But the key difference between Utai coming into first grade in that Souths game in 2002 and us now is that in '02 we had big name players in all key positions. If anything hooker was once again our Achilles heel, but the 2 hooker rotation where the hooker just had to pass the ball from the ruck was in fashion back then so we at least were on par with the strategy of those times.

Utai was like the cherry on top.
Abit like Inu and Perrett were in 2012.

This team still needs to get itself into the top echelon of players for each position and then we can recruit or unearth a cherry to take us to GF contenders.

One positive going into 2020 is that we go into round 1 with a settled spine, albeit missing Foran. We know DWZ will be fullback and JMK will be hooker. Lewis will most likely partner Wakeham or Cogger in the halves. The last couple seasons I doubt Pay has been able to run offseason training with as much confidence in his preferred spine players as he does this offseason. His only real headache is deciding whether Wakeham is ready for 1st grade or not because he has the most natural talent of the 3. Aside from that his only other real decision to make is who partners Hoppa in the centres and who kicks goals if Meaney doesn't get a wing spot. Hopefully this sees us at least start the season stronger than previous years and then you never know. We could get lucky and jag a mid season signing and make a run for the finals.

Stimpson will be our goal kicker if Meaney isn’t there starting. 

Still in the 18 month "co-existence" period here. It's 2yrs since NBN kicked in here & it's supposed to be 18 months after that with speed limitations as they phase out all the other stuff on the lines & in the exchange. I don't know why it's taking so long. All phones around here were cut off 11 months ago. Businesses must have stuff slowly being unplugged or something (things like eftpos maybe, who knows). The NBN only guarantee a min of 10mb p/s download speed & up to around 25mb max during this time.
I changed from 50mb plan to 100mb plan last week & it made no difference whatsoever. Their email did say it would happen "within a few days", so maybe 5 days isn't enough.
The NBN have literally put the brakes on everyone's access until this "co-existence" thing is lifted. I notice the ISP's still charge full price & don't just charge a tenth of the monthly plan though...it's such a rort.
There's no wireless option here, nearest is 50kms away. Sky Muster (satellite) wouldn't be any better & would have severe limitations. The only other option is a 3G/4G dongle & they'd be even slower & more expensive (good for backup or travel or maybe for people more than a mile or 2 from the node, but that's it). I'll just have to wait it out.   

Villi, you're not working in the water cleaning industry are you? If you are, you really should get that chip off your shoulder... :)

https://tinyurl.com/trbzyea

Bwahahaha!!!

I use Des for all my pipe cleaning.... his hair mops up everything everytime...

Sometimes when we shrink him for the small jobs we have a few beers and misplace the enlarging machine,  but no drama little Des doing a post match interview would be good, he can sit on the mic.

foxsports nrl has a picture of desi hasler holding his 4 fingers up in the air saying manly have a hooker crisis in apai korasou gone to penrith there next hooker in line stood down in  masua mausu sees like he will go to jail for a few years he almost killed a guy stabbing him last year & now levi from newcastle is a dun deal manly will pay him 250 a season while newcasle will chip in 150 a season 

Allegedly*

Cmon young Gauff... would love nothing more than seeing Serena our in rd 1...

The tourney organisers have obviously stitched Serena up cos she a women...

Woohoo!!!...
Aussie crowd brilliant in supporting the under dog, and acknowledging a fading champ (albeit a poor loser and gracious winner)..,

No doubt the only reason American fans at home are not booing the 15 year old because she’s a yank... 

If, we as a club organise a deal, where we pay 250k a season for a player and arrange for a third party to pay 150k we have to declare 400k on our salary cap. We need to play no part in a third party deal.  In this case the player's current club is the third party.  Under these circumstances is a club exempted from the rule.  Both clubs should declare the 150k the to preserve the integrity of the salary cap.

Ohhhh... it was Venus... I must be racist...

Integrity of the cap is an oxymoron my friend...

If only the Hayne Plane stuck around with the 49’ers.....

Cos the 69er got him in trouble???...

So it looks like Souffs are now after Addo-Carr. I know the salary cap is a farce, but blatantly shoving the circus in our faces is a total insult. Come on Rusty I'm sure that you can buy an international forward pack to match that striking backline. TTT will turn a blind eye, I'm sure.

Good one for Marki today on the official Bulldogs web site....so he can go and see a player he has gone on record as "hating"..the General Luke Patten. One of our best. Marki..hate away...One of my favourite players.

The General is a legend.... every primary school in Australia should study the great man and pay homage to his deeds .. in fact his birthday should be national holiday..