Just came in from my son's house where we had family and a few friends gather round the fire for our GF party, yes bloody cold in Brissy today!
Reading the match day blog I was surprised there was so much criticism of the effort.
I though Laui was brilliant for them in the first half, the type of player we always find hard to handle. You look at sides like Easts with Keary and now Walker and Souths with Cody Walker. In the second half I hardly noticed him.....its the way a game runs when your forwards start falling off tackles. We gave Luai room to move and waited for him.....big wrong! poor preparation for what he can do, He is a much better player than those on here give credit to.....Whose your Daddy was a great sledge!.....it seems that something must have been said at half time about him as he was roughed up a bit in the second half and as I said I hardly noticed him.
If there was a single issue where we lost it, it was about the time that Brown kicked early for Moses and it was only the final effort from Penrith that prevented us scoring, from then on our backline defence stopped moving up and were on the back foot sliding. This gave Penrith so much room for second phase play.....if we had scored it might have changed that momentum and roll on that made Penrith unstoppable.
I think some of the criticism is unwarranted, we did not play smart but the effort was always there.
This Penrith side is one of the most dominent I have seen since the St George era. Brilliant sides like Canterbury and Parra in the eighties, Canberra, Melb, Easts were brilliant but none had the absolute dominance that this side has. I think they could get to three in a row and maybe more when you look at the youth in their side and the pathways they have developed.
Look at their performance right through the grades, Penrith as a club has really got its act together.....we can look to attain it as well, if we can produce some naturally gifted footballer's brought up through our pathways, we are only now starting to identify these issues as our renaissance continues. Otherwise nothing will change unless we are go into areas of TPA's and individual sponsors.
It's quite remarkable we actually got to a grand final this year given the way the season evolved and the issues surrounding the coach. Under the circumstances we should be proud of what we achieved as against what we didn't.The blatant disregard of general opinion has to be an issue for the club going forward.
I also think we have produced in Lane and Matterson some top quality forwards, our recruitment of Hopgood adds further to that, I would look to off load Junior, he is bludging on the work of RCG, we need that Fisher Harris type to give us some toughness. As Wiz once says looks like Tarzan and plays like Jane. Maybe Klemmer could be a short term answer for that toughness.....I like Junior but he is not delivering what he promises and I am not sure the effort is 100 per cent.
Replies
Unfortunately Jnr is here for the long haul.
Me I don't think Riff are getting enough credit.
I understand it's in our DNA to say we'll this was this and this player didn't do that the coach's didn't do that.
End of the day Riff just didn't allow us to do anything.
BA is right that win the collision line holds true for this team.
For me the big improvement in this team has to come on the defensive side.Line speed non existent edge looked better the further the year went on but we need to be more effective in either better first up contact or getting numbers to slow the ruck.
On the attacking side we have to be able to play some footy bringing the ball out.Its ok to get away with grinding teams but in games against the good sides you need to be having the ability to have a crack out of your own end and make it so it's the norm.
I hope BA has someone in mind to help with the defence next year, having Barrett run the attack is great but if we could get say Madge in to do defence, let BA look over the team as a whole and have nothing fall through the cracks.
There has been nothing at all confirmed of Madge going to Canberra.
Them, us and Canterbury are after Madge, he wont make a decision til after the WC if there is one, he might wait for a job to present itself like interim at St. George or Newcastle.
240v EEL, we all know you are a plant.....there a 3 people not welcome here you, Drooper and his sanctimonius mate Boyle.
240v is electrical not organic. That's sad Poppa that your 3 best friends are not welcome. Very sad now 😿
What's strange is with almost this same squad our defence was rock solid the other year, but our attack sucked. I think we have the structures to have good defence, and we have the fitness - I actually think improving our attack so we don't have to chance our arm so many times will mean our defence improves.
Good post Pops I don't necessarily agree re Jnr at times he's been excellent but we need to add 2 more forwards into the middle rotation who are going to bring linespeed and aggression. We need to ditch this BS of carrying Jake Arthur on the bench as well.
They'll probably have to look at potentially a 2 hooker type model next year as surely there not going to use Hodgson for full games.
Bailey Simonsson will get first shot at left centre next year but we need an injection of speed.In saying that the mentioned didn't look to bad in space.
I think we were hoping that for this year with Stone playing a cheese type role.
Yes after having big hopes for Bailley pre season and then being disappointed, it was good to see he has found a niche,I think he would make a handy fullback replacement as well.....which brings me back to Gutherson, someone on here called him a dancing ballerina, I thought he tried his guts out and apart from the out of position for the Sorrenson try, I could see no wrong.
I think Coryn summed it up pretty well with the comment "you can only play as well as your allowed".
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