So I've not had much opportunity to share my thoughts on last weeks match, so I thought I'd just spew out a bunch of thoughts, observations, feelings.
1. You really need to pay little head to the cricket-line scoreline that the Roosters racked up against us, because if the NRL persists with the current interpretation of its laws you're going to see those scores happen at least a couple of times every round. If you look at this round alone you've got 56-4, 42-12, 42-4 and 31-12. The reality is that by increasing the pace of the game, you will ensure that a significant proportion of matches end in a capitulation. Quite simply, if side A gets on top, and you spend too much time defending then you'll simply not have the petrol left in the tank by the end of the game to offer any real resistance. The only thing that matters about the result is we're not up to the standard of the top four or so teams like the Roosters - but didn't we all know that already?
2. I continue to have my reservations about our halves combination - hence my off-season obsession with finding a way to bring Chris Sandow into the side without having to suffer his defence. I don't think I can say anything more I haven't said on the issue, but I remain convinced we need to go beyond the obvious solutions to find a way to solve a problem there is no simple way to fix. I notice someone expressing dissapointment that Corey Norman wasn't showing he could be our "dominant playmaker". That's not the guy's go - he's doing ok in my book as an alternative point of attack, which is the role that should be expected of someone of his age and experience.
3. Will Hopoate is going to be something special for us. He's obviously not quite on the pace, but I find his sheer class quite breathtaking sometimes. His defence is still a little off-the-mark but he'll work his way back into the State of Origin side by the time that rolls around.
4. Darcy Lussick is my man crush. The guy just brings it where other members of our pack don't. I personally would like to see him go back to starting at 13 and Junior Paulo come into the side to give us more size. I think you need to ensure your starting pack doesn't get rolled and you need your biggest, most powerful boppers out there to start the game or you risk losing the game in the first 20 minutes. It's probably the only thing I liked our Ricky's Stuarts "initiatives" of last year. When the game opens up, that's when your Kenny Edwards, and fringe forwards come into the game. But lay a platform first. Losing him for a month is going to be a massive loss.
5. Don't ever miss a game, again, Nathan Peats.
6. This is still a much better side that we boasted last year. All of the wrist-slitting is premature in my view, unless you had the expectation we were going to be a top four team. Right now, there are four teams in the NRL at another level to everyone else. There's probably another four or so teams who have rosters that could put them on the edge of those teams, if they could pull it all together, and then there are the rest of the teams who are still at development stages and desperately hoping some players will step-up or they're still building their combinations. We're clearly in that bottom bracket right now but in my view, we're ahead of where I expected us to be in terms of the development of some our players and the overall strength of our roster. Our season will really start in round four, and regardless of what happens next week, we're still 2 points ahead of where most people thought we'd be at that point, before we go into some more winnable games.
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I thought your man crushes were the backstreet boys and new kids on the block ?
Remember you dragged your missus along to the concert 2 years ago and you wore the black leather pants with the lace up crutch ? true story...
Your first paragraph is getting very close to my' New Rules To Suck' blog before the season started. In that, I feared that we are returning to failure that was Superleague. I feared that the scorelines will blow out. While I think it is still to soon to make that judgment, indications are not good as your first paragraph indicates. Fans, generally, don't like games with large differences in the scorelines and, as in Superleague, fans leave the game. The people who brought in the new rules, Greenburge, Smith and co, no nothing of Rugby League. They introduced those rules about a month before the 2014 season started when most clubs had their strategy and rosters based on the then existing rules. Very cleaver that. A subjective observation : I have not seen a match this year that I really liked, save for the Eels first game, which an Eels supporter would like. That was my experience with Superleague. I fear that the fans may be of the same conviction.
There are no developing teams in the modern game.
Clearly the salary cap cannot be effective while "third party payments" are allowed.
The Roosters developed their roster by cheque book, so did South's.
You know the salary cap is a joke when the most sort after front rower signs with a team that needed him the least.
Manly were blessed to have not one but two top class halves come through their ranks, we have two hopes of ever being a top 4 team, one is luck with our juniors, the other is to employ a creative accountant.
The days of developing teams over several years have been over for over a decade, "well run" clubs build within months not years.
The Eels have spent 30 years "developing" players, it's time we start "developing" accountants.
Couldn't agree more Joseph.
I've said before all we need is a larger table, a better money man and more brown paper bags.
The salary cap has been a farce for some time, particularly 3rd party deals as you've mentioned.
I'm just hoping BA is the sort of coach, like Bellamy, who can turn your run of the mill player into fantastic players. He did it with Horo at Manly so I believe he can, in time.
I agree.
The teams with the least juniors (Melbourne, Manly & Roosters) have dominated for the last decade and the teams with the most juniors are not playing finals footy. I'm not sure if it is the salary cap is not working or something else, but something is obviously wrong.
Unfortunately I don't think that developing juniors is the answer, it hasn't worked for us in the last decade - I think this is really sad for the game (players and fans). It is all about recruitment and the creative accountant - pretty sad if you ask me.
I've been banging on about instant success via creative accounting adopted by the top clubs. Sick of hearing guys make excuses that success will take years of development and patience. That's why we will never win another comp with this type of attitude. Tolerating failure is what we are now renown for.
Gone are the days of developing the young players who stay at one club for their entire careers. We need to have smart businessmen/accounts running this club if we are any chance of competing and help us attract/keep the better players.
well said Joseph. good examples.
Agree 100% Joseph. It is not good for the NRL to have 4 dominant teams who can just buy who they want when they want. There needs to be an overhaul of the cap & particularly 3rd party deals to create a level playing field as regards team rosters. If the competition is skewed to these 4 teams the whole NRL competition will suffer as the lower teams will lose supporters. Parra will not continue to have a large fan base if it consistently comes near the bottom of the table & this applies to all teams. It is the NRL hierarchy that needs to fix this asap.
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