Speaking of guys that do the tough hards in the hard times, Gus is very impressed with the coaching of Josh Jackson. 

Apparently the young players really respond to Josh and really put in.

Everyone including Josh is probably surprised at how well he is doing at coaching. 

Josh Jackson coaching a dogs team to a premiership after Cirro coaches us to a 3- peat would be as good as it gets.

Best thing he did for us was get kicked in the head by Billy Slater. His strength for us was also his weakness....made a lot of metres but did never had a quick play the ball. Obviously old Gerry Sutton had a memory of that occasion. Hard to believe Seizer wasn't binned for a copybook hip drop on Curran. I don't know whether it was complacency or the week off did us no favours but we won so no complaints there but it was harder than it should have been. Tracy is certainly better for us at fullback than Taafe. I'd have to say Taafe was disappointing.

Geebus dude... it ain't embarrassing... The tigers have the talent to make the odd break or three against anyone...

What is different this year is when we aim up in defence the opposition find it hard to make yards out of their end.

In attack we have the guys to make something happen.

With Tracey and perhaps Sexton we might be an even better side.

Taaffe at fullback isn't as good as I hoped he would be.

I rate the Tigers and they put in a lot of effort. 

But when we got on top their discipline and decision making went out the window. 

The hardest thing in sport is going from a winning position to a losing position.  But the better teams come back.

If Panthers lead us 14-6  at half-time and we come back to 22-14 with 20 mins to play, the game is far from won. We might need to score again to win it.

What we and the Tigers need to do is play for the full 80 every week. 

In my kind Klem is Famous for pretending to get a quick play of the ball by humping the ground...

Everybody has that honour win/loss at one time or another when live game posting...
Some just have it more regularly....

Question for the should've bought Adam Reynolds brigade... 
Was it worth it???...
Might be the only decision Souths have got right in the past 3 years ..

Question for the should've paid 1.2-1.4M for Mitch Misses brigade...
Was it worth it???...

Question for the pay Ponga 1.2M a year brigade..
Is it worth it???...
The pay Tommy Turbo brigade 1.2M+ l... Etc...

The question is, do you blow 12%+ of your cap on one dude... Or 20%+ on two... And when was the late time it was worth it....

Cleary doesn't count cos his dad's on 12M a year as coach.... If you know what I mean...

Question for the "how many utilities" do we need? crew.
We're doing all right so far.

Ponga was never worth that money. Newcastle should invest in their own juniors. Turbo is worth it but the injuries make it hard to justify it. 

Very happy to be wrong. It’s strange how well we play when we put in that extra effort. Curran, Mahoney and Kikau lead that line speed. Critta and Kiraz save us with very hard runs. Our little forwards out pace every team. 

Fullback while I am not sold on Taaffe, Tracey is excellent and we have young Papalii. There are some good young players around, and we have this position covered.

Halfback - one good kick from Hutch, but overall not an impressive game.  Sexton apparently very good in reserve grade.
We have O'Neill and Woods coming through. We need to see Sexton in the NRL to know if we need a more experienced halfback for a couple of years.

Out of all the names listed Turbo is the only one I want and as good as Tracey is Turbo is better.  But we would never get Turbo and fullback isn't a major problem. 

As for what we need, I would not sign anyone for this season unless we can get a good prop for reasonable money and we have the cap space.

Even at prop if we get a few guys back from injury and a few guys fitter it isn't a disaster. 

I'm happy to leave all of the decisions to Gus and Cirro mostly I want to that we keep our good players. 

So I would definitely extend O'Neill, Morrin, Sexton,  Patolo and Skelton in that order.

Reall6 depends then on who is available and how much cap space we have. But some of those young big props that occasionally get a run for teams like the Broncos are who I would be targeting. I don't mind if it takes 3 years to turn them into and NRL starter, I want a prop that can potentially win the  medal for best player on the field in a GF.
. 

Wow... The decision to penalise JoJo for a strip is an absolute disgrace... #FvckdaBvnk....

Nailed it...
A team with a champion or a champion team...
A team that looks for one bloke to do it all or a team that shares the load....

We would be better off with a better experienced halfback than Hutch. If somebody was available it would be crazy not to offer them good money. 

Terrible decision. Such a shame. Could have been a great finish to that game. 

How can they fvck it up so bad???... No wonder some crazy conspiracists link outcomes to betting...

An example of a player that would fit us perfectly just scored for the Cowboys. Cotter

Yeah I like Cotter, but everyone knows good he is. 

I have Patolo, Sutton and Fifita out injured. 

I haven't seen a reserve grade game so I don't know if Tetevano offers anything. 

Fifita and Farmer have potential but might take a couple of years. 

Hughes and Patolo have potential , but I think that the guy who can potentially make the most difference this season is Sutton.  He was carrying a bad injury last season.

Cows / Fins could be high scoring shoot-out. 

I think that a Cows win is best for us.

Tetavano has been terrible. Offers nothing. Todd is our next middle to come into first grade from form. He has been outstanding every week. 

Top 30 forwards

Jordan Pereira
They Mooney- would be great.
Jarrod Wallace - probably too old.
Isaac Liu
Klese Hass
Jordan McLean 
Thomas Mikaele 

There may be others but these are thr better known players. 

Final thoughts on prop.

Tetevano and Knight are off contract and will be let go.

I think Tetevano was brought in to help mentor and educate young players also to avoid throwing a young guy into NRL if we had lots of injuries.

I would promote Todd and sign Mooney and if we can't Mooney or we had some spare slots another young big guy who as made his NRL debut this season and impressed with limited opportunities. 

McLean is the experienced big guy zi would go for if he wants to play a couple more seasons. His form this season is improved and training with us he would get fit.

Lodge and Brown are off contract at Manly, but bad for our culture,  I ruled them out.

How did you figure that one out?
Broncos have come from spooners to premiership favourites in short amount of time, while Souths have gone the other way in the same amount of time.

If ever there was a clear cut decision on good recruitment - poor retention, this is it.

Once again..... This is is probably the 2nd best example of poor recruitment by us and best retention by parra.

Moses missing, is clear to everyone that gels that Parra team and puts the W in their results column.

You're on a roll with these wild posts, but hopefully you get one right soon.

I think the real question on this topic is:
Do you spend 12% or 20% on 1 or 2 marquee players that consistently get you to finals (not necessarily make or win GF)?

Or do you refuse and spread your cap over 30 players, miss finals constantly but have a strong chance to win reserve grade?

I guess the answer is probably based on whether you consider success as a "business" or success as a "footy club"

Your examples of Souths and Parra and Manly are good ones as they cleary show, how much of a hit the business model can take when you fsil to make finals. Fans desert the team, it becomes less marketable and revenue drops.

Surprisingly, Manly fans still turn up to home games (probably because of the class effect). Equally, Parra has decent support in home and away games regardless of finals aspirations.

But Zef is very right in saying we are the best supported Sydney team even when we are down (Dragons probably 2nd best). This probably masks the savage effect of missing oit on finals and has allowed us to continue spreading our cap across majority of top 30 players rather than skew it towards a handful or marquee players.

Im not convinced our model is correct and results support this thought, but we shall see how things go and if our mindset changes in next few years.

You should watch the Dogs presser and see Cirro's comments about Burto.

I agree with Cirro, Burto is potentially the best player in the game, but he has a lot to learn and he has a lot of areas where he can improve.

He needs a better halves partner and at a minimum we need Tracey at fullback or someone even better.

The problem with targeting high priced star players is that they rarely leave their current club unless another club pays well over the odds.

A secondary problem is that when they are injured there is a lot of salary cap sitting on the sidelines and the season can be over before they get fit.

If Api wasn't injured the Dogs / Tigers game would have featured 7 ex-Panther players next season it will be 9. When is the last time Panthers poached a high priced star player from another side?

The risk with Reynolds was always that he might get injured. The improvement in the Brisbane is far deeper than 1 player the problems at Souths are far deeper than one player.