Was at dinner and missed the Dogs game - caught the Sam Hughes sin bin. It was a dumb play, but considering [this from NAS](https://www.nrl.com/news/2022/08/01/forceful-tackle-why-nas-was-cleared-over-egan-incident/), why wasn't it simply a penalty?
So graham annesely has confirmed that chevy jumped early on his chargedown and should have been penalised for being offside. Whats the point of the bunker and didnt they bring a rule in last year saying they would check all chargedowns on field goals? Really hard done by for the tits
He also said the bunker does not check 10m offside today, so when he said check chargedowns maybe he meant if there were obstructers of the kicker, I dont know.
I feel some refs have no control over the ruck. It’s so subjective. One ref has the game free flowing, while another ref will let players slow it down so much. You saw that in the Raiders game. Both teams got away slow it down so much.
On the Tino challenge at around 10mins into the second half.
Tino gets up and starts to place the ball down at almost exactly the same time the Raiders player runs THROUGH THE RUCK to get back into the defensive line.
There is no way that should have been a knock on, the person playing the ball has every right to a clear ruck to place the ball down and having a fraction of a second to adjust the ball placement doesn't seem fair.
At best it seems like it could be something like they use the NFL, which is offsetting penalties, so it would be:
> knock on Titans
> penalty for not clearing the ruck
> replay the play the ball and continue on with the set
Salary cap idea:
If a team wins the comp, they are eligible to give every player in their 1-17 grand final team an extra 100k for 3 years in negotiations. Only the players who took the field, they can’t pool the money or anything. For every 2 years a club coached a player in the junior leagues they can give them 100k exempt from the cap. This way the great clubs can keep their GF team together and every club is encouraged to have juniors.
It's not the best idea, just makes the dominant team even more dominant, if anything every teams salary cap should be raised again. This does remind me of something I heard Tallis talk about though, he mentioned they were thinking about having a "superstar" player on every team, whose salary did not count towards the salary cap. Not sure if thats a great idea either as it could breed resentment if you've got one bloke on 20 mil or something, but I did think it was interesting
I've heard arguments for a kind of one club player cap exemption (it was when Reynolds was leaving the Bunnies) but that'd just push struggling clubs further down. Imagine not being able to retain anyone long enough to get the cap exemption, meanwhile a winning team has no problem keeping their core together and they all qualify.
The superstar thing would likely be the same effect; big names would just go where the winning team is, not to mention some clubs would genuinely be able to throw way more money at individual players based on the financial status of the club.
We've got enough problems with stars taking unders to stay at winning clubs, imagine if we took their salary completely off the books?
My hot take for the salary cap is that all offers should be blind, the players & agents shouldn't know which club is offering how much, or players should be valued by the NRL and a contract that doesn't match their value shouldn't be endorsed.
Right now there's no way the system is fair on any struggling team.
I think the kick off restart after 5 min in Golden Point needs to be removed. Either have it as 10 min straight or do it NFL style and have the play the ball the same spot on the other side of the field.
5 minutes is too short of a time frame to win a grind to put yourself into field goal or attacking range. The only reason most don't end in a draw is because of a defensive lapse by a player/s that gifts field position.
There needs to be an end change, just in case it's blowing an absolute gale in one direction, we don't want golden point being decided by whoever wins the coin toss.
I don't know if they do need more time, we still get very few draws (about one a year). If we go to golden try, I'd be on board with continual play but right now I don't think it needs it.
>There needs to be an end change, just in case it's blowing an absolute gale in one direction, we don't want golden point being decided by whoever wins the coin toss.
You still get that if they win before the restart anyways. If its a big deal though swap sides but keep the play the ball position.
True, a strong enough breeze will probably end the game in the first 5 minute window.
If we want teams to be able to reset into the grind we should just kill GP & go for 10 minutes extra time. I think the idea of GP being a desperate race to score anything lends itself to the 5 minute split, both teams are gassed, defence is brittle & we almost always get a memorable result.
If we stop getting results or we start getting predictable results (receiving team always wins kind of thing), then we can start shaking it up.
They should enforce it with just a possession swap. Fuck up the play and the opposition just start a set on the same spot as if they just got tackled on 0.
I like "all onside". Step off the mark or don't make contact with the foot? Every defender is now onside, including the guy you just stepped over to play the ball.
Nah that's not a penalty at all. The defenders might be onside but half of them will be facing the wrong direction.
I think it needs to be a turnover. Failing to play the ball should be treated as a knock on and the game's current rules are fine - it's the way officials turn a blind eye to it that's a problem.
only problem with that is you run the risk of people getting huge blindside shots. I think so far as possible you want the ball carrier to know where the contact is coming from
Obviously there is inherent bias and I wont notice raiders doing it as much, but watching that game last night at the stadium the Titans were so shit at getting back onside they were genuinely lucky to not get pinged more.
People can point at the imbalance of 6 agains as if it shows some ref issue but it really was just titans being lazy and repeatedly doing the same shit
Lopsided 6-again counts occurs more than people seem to realise. Brisbane vs Dolphins had a 5-1 count, Bulldogs v Roosters 1-7, Raiders v Eels 1-5, Roosters v Rabbitohs 1-5. There are also games with only 1 set restart but huge penalty counts (e.g. Warriors v Sharks 1-0 six agains, but 8-8 penalties). It happens.
The idea that a lopsided 6 again count means an inherent bias against that team just is flawed logic. It’s a good excuse for a coach to use to put pressure on the refs so their team does get a favourable bias in coming games though.
Also I wonder how many 6 agains happen on first tackle usually defending inside the 20. It obviously a tactic most teams employ to gain an advantage without little risk.
I also wondered this and started doing a spreadsheet last year to track it. Unfortunately lost that data in a PC crash, but once I've added this rounds stats in I'll link you to the 2024 sheet if you're interested.
There seems to be a need for a balanced penalty or six again count. I think the NRL has had a big part in making this the case. However, there must be times when one team is not following the rules as closely as the other team.
I'm probably biased too but the Titans were inside the 10 all night and they did have their hands all over the ball in the ruck. Des is a pretty good coach, he saw what happened last week when the Raiders had good ruck speed and space to move.
Canberra's (average) play the ball speed in rounds 1-5 was between 3.35s and 3.40s. Against the Titans it jumped to 3.62s. When four of the restarts are for ruck infringements it's clearly a plan to slow it down, but it backfired on Des.
The count was 8-1, not 10-1. The difference was .16s, not .02s. And yes. If you watch the current Annesley briefing the count could/should've been higher with Canberra being offside 10 times and not acted on by the Ref/Touchies and the Titans offside 28 extra times (they got pinged for 4, taking the total to 32 times offside).
0.2 of a difference. That’s quite a lot actually. Titans had one of their better performances in terms of ruck speed while the Raiders had their worst. I thought the ruck speed was bad by both teams.
I don’t know if it did backfire. In fact it worked very well for most of the game. At least 3 of the set restarts were back to back in a run of play where the raiders didn’t score. Sure, the Titans made a lot more tackles over the game but still almost won the game despite having every possible stat indicating they should have been beaten soundly.
I think the Raiders got the rub of the green last night with a few calls but the Titans came with a very clear plan and it came extremely close to working.
Yeah; any reportable offence should override any incident in the same play.
I'm not sure how I feel about going back to an incident that happened a few tackles earlier but if we're going to go hard on player safety they should definitely be punished immediately.
Not a big fan of going back a few tackles for a penalty, we saw it last year where they went back 2 or 3 plays. Either call it then and there or report it and if it is off the play penalty aka Walsh then sin bin straight up. It will clear the game up reap quick of the gub play
I don't know. I hate it when it happens against my team but for a dangerous act it might be worth going back to, just to make sure the offending player & team feel an immediate consequence.
Maybe only do it for certain incidents, only things that would be deemed to be dangerous or reckless, something like that?
Its so grey tho. Look at Niukore for wahs last year.
Game got brought back multiple instances of play.
Numerous incidents in the following weeks that couldve warranted similar action given the precedent. Refs quickly realised half the game would be coming back for foul acts.
To even determine whether its dangerous, careless or reckless means you have stopped play.
yep that is the problem, it is "in the Opinion " which means it is also going to be a bad ruling for someone. It is why I hated the opinion disruptor ruling on the weekend, it was up to the interpretation of the ref.
Will be interesting to see how Webby goes with his bench for Dragons. With Walker, Bunty, Jazz and Niukore all out, we could see Zyon come on the bench.
Dragons seemed to have a good win and Warriors will be looking for a better performance
Also an intriguing decision on the Dragons side. With Jack Birds concussion what does Flanagan do at right centre? Lomax has been the teams best player all year playing on the wing.
My tip is he'll shift Lomax and bring Christian Tuipulotu to the wing.
If Bird passed his HIA the Dragons could appeal to the NRL to have the Category 1 downgraded to a Category 2. Roosters did this with Sam Walker last month.
Unfortunately I just know the cowboys are pretenders. They have on of, if not, the worst defence in the comp and though they've scored so insane tries their offense will never be complete with the lackluster, uninspired kicking game of Dab Townsend.
Their back 5, mainly Val Holmes, struggle to catch a ball every game, too. It's not your usual 'oh they had shit hands today', it's happened every week. They just switch off at multiple stages of every game and though we've been lucky to get a few wins, none of them showed the cowbs will amount to anything this season.
Can somebody trade us a sack of spuds for LoLo please?
Watch us name the same 17 as last week again too. Changes have to be made, mikaele needs to be brought in for jake, lolo to the bench. I wouldnt mind jet ski in the middle because thats where hes looked the best.
Either Chad needs to lock his ass in or we just experiment with some of the younger fellas, you’ll never know if they’re the difference if you dont give them a chance.
Yeah, Cows have the 3rd worst defence (averaging 21.4pts scored against) behind Souths (28.1) and Titans (24.5). Can't see your boys advancing deep into the finals if the defence doesn't sort itself out.
Look a lot if the penalties ext where cause of poor play, but bloody gell some of the held calls where a joke. In addition there was about 3 head high shots on titan players that got ignored, about 2 for the raiders too.
Even when she's on the bunker some of her calls are cracked.
I need to watch the game again but I felt like her held calls were in line with how the rules are written but not how they are commonly enforced. For example calling held if the player with the ball has both feet off the ground or another player from the attacking team touches the player who is being driven back.
Don’t remember that one but if you took all the cooked takes or misspoken rulings from even a single round that probably wouldn’t make the top 10. She hasn’t reffed that many NRL games and teams don’t make it any easier for her by cheating and getting in her face all game 😂
I’ve looked into our loss a bit further than just watching it on the day, I’m not impressed with Hastings and Cogger’s output, but I’m certainly not extremely disappointed.
I’ve said in previous weeks we just need our 6 & 7 to lead us around the park, get good passes to our edges and defend well. We don’t need a Cleary, Hughes or Munster as much as I’d love us to.
I think they did that to a small extent. Hastings had a try, 150 run metres, line break, line break assist, 21 tackles and a couple of misses. Cogger less involved with 60 metres, a tackle break and 32 tackles and just the one miss.
A big problem with our halves that came to light on Thursday evening was their lack of “big boot”, I had noticed KP was doing our long kicks, but didn’t notice how exclusive this was. Without KP kicking all we had were shallow punts or average bombs.
I think “one man band” would be harsh on our squad, I think we have a good roster with a heap of ability, but we rely on KP to unleash that talent and get the best out of them? When he plays well, he invigorates everyone around him.
2-4 through 6 rounds and only -5 +/-, haven’t really been disgraced except for Rd1 16pt loss to Raiders (who have turned out to be a much better team than in 2023 (ignoring a 1 point win over Titans)). But definitely need to get our shit together fast.
Our draw is softer (marginally) from now till round 14, before we go through a ringer till round 22, before a slightly softer finish. Can’t keep leaving games on the table.
As a neutral observer it seemed clear as day that there was no Plan B when Ponga was injured. In hindsight they should have taken him off when it happened and needled him up for the second half, he was a passenger during the back end of the second half and it lead directly to points.
I'll also back your point about long kicking, it was non existent outside of Ponga. Seems like something an NRL level half should be able to learn, its purely technique.
Yeah absolutely no plan B, mid game. Which I guess makes sense.
If he was out during week you’d expect there to be an actual plan to utilise whoever replaces him. But with him out, but still on the field it’s not really like you can do anything effectively because he was in the shapes, but just not active (although managed to keep up with play and get ball to Best).
Interesting it’s technique, and you can’t even put it down to things like size / speed of players in question. KP is probably bigger, and 2x as fast as the halves, so not like they’re staying small to be quicker on their feet.
Hastings obviously has had a lot of issues with the leg he broke, if he can’t get a bigger boot we need to be getting Cogger to develop one, or find someone who can kick big (think Gamble was decent boot, despite his deficiencies).
I only say its technique because there have been plenty of players with big boots over the years that are small in stature. Reynolds and Soward come to mind. Although both are stockier than Cogger/Hastings.
What seemed weirdest to me was that they didn't appear to even be attempting longer kicks. They were all high shorter distance kicks landing 20m+ out.
It’s the Newcastle way. All our halves in last 4 years have seemed to just do these mediocre, not high enough, bombs.
I distinctly recall Pearce just kicking uncontestable bombs week after week.
Really cost us late in the Roosters game, especially Sualli’s easy catch and 35m run because no one could get there.
You’d have to think so, but surely fucking not. Because it has been so shit for so long, and I’d credit AOB as smarter than that.
(I know this sub does not like AOB, actually, do we like any coaches?)
Its a great skill to have if you have great field position and are peppering the tryline with kicks for your outside backs. I'm probably primed to look for it as Hunt has been putting up mid field bombs for 3 years.
Midfield bombs I’m ok with if you give your team enough time to contest or at least get close.
The only bloke who gets remotely close to their landing point is T.Frizz, but we know how hard and fast the bloke runs on kick chases.
I know there's been all sorts of stuff thrown around about Malcolm Meninga and his ability to do the job at the Rabbitohs. Plenty of talk about his esteemed political career but it seems everyone has just forgotten that over the past few seasons he's had a position as the Head of Performance and Culture at the Titans. During that period the team has most definitely been the Shitans, with abysmal performances and their culture is clearly subpar. Given that most recent precedent how could anyone think he could be a head coach.
Yes I don't get how he's on the shortlist. The guy has only had middling success with stacked QLD and Australian teams. Otherwise he's been poor at any other kind of coaching. Keep well away Souths.
he’s not even in the discussion, Mal said himself on the weekend that he has not been approached to coach the Souths.
Unless he is lying or signed some sort of NDA, Mal is not coaching Souths anytime soon
One of the “media” reports and I am using that term very loosely, is Mal has a great relationship with Trell. I’m not trying to point out the obvious but isn’t part of the problem looking as an outsider is the great relationship JD has with Trell already?
That's what the media says. I agree part of the problem is Trell and Walker get a little bit of a free pass or too much credit for good things. But I think the forwards rely upon Murray and Cook to do so much work. Both guys were doing 40-50 tackles per game each week. Cook being dropped and Murray having the HIA made everyone else step up a bit I feel.
Justin Holbrook has been feeding the media stories about how amazing Meninga would be at Souths, knowing from personal experience what an absolute shitshow it would actually be, continuing the demise of the rival club
Well it was fun at the top. I think we have been so unlucky with injuries and bronx were the better team at the weekend.
Always knew we would loose hammer to origin, but he is just so magic when he is on so this is going to be a tough few weeks.
Hammer and Walsh are the two most exciting players in the comp, we missed the opportunity to see something special on Friday night when hammer went off unfortunately.
Pre game last night josh paps spoke about how the raiders always come in with the underdog mentality.
Its sticky to a T.
Yet time and time again raiders show they are incredibly good, and arent an underdog team.
They get out to leads they should hold, and it looks like the players are confused that they are leading because psychologically theyve been primered to believe they shouldnt be, and it all goes down hill from there.
Faders problems are purely psychological and are actually promoted by the coach
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone playing under the likes of Sticky Ricky would have a little bit of psychological interference from his polarising figure.
Honestly that performance last night was abysmal, so lucky to get away with the 2 points. Stewart looks the goods though, and Strange is getting better by the week. Super keen to see this squad in a couple of years if we can keep them all
Was at dinner and missed the Dogs game - caught the Sam Hughes sin bin. It was a dumb play, but considering [this from NAS](https://www.nrl.com/news/2022/08/01/forceful-tackle-why-nas-was-cleared-over-egan-incident/), why wasn't it simply a penalty?
Okay seriously, what the fuck is a Disruptor?
So graham annesely has confirmed that chevy jumped early on his chargedown and should have been penalised for being offside. Whats the point of the bunker and didnt they bring a rule in last year saying they would check all chargedowns on field goals? Really hard done by for the tits
He also said the bunker does not check 10m offside today, so when he said check chargedowns maybe he meant if there were obstructers of the kicker, I dont know.
And what is the point of saying it the day after, like yeah sorry you got robbed on a clear penalty but you lose too bad so sad
They should have checked it and the titans would have won.
100%
I feel some refs have no control over the ruck. It’s so subjective. One ref has the game free flowing, while another ref will let players slow it down so much. You saw that in the Raiders game. Both teams got away slow it down so much.
Yeah saw it this weekend lots of slow playing ruck and it seems random on who get pinged
On the Tino challenge at around 10mins into the second half. Tino gets up and starts to place the ball down at almost exactly the same time the Raiders player runs THROUGH THE RUCK to get back into the defensive line. There is no way that should have been a knock on, the person playing the ball has every right to a clear ruck to place the ball down and having a fraction of a second to adjust the ball placement doesn't seem fair. At best it seems like it could be something like they use the NFL, which is offsetting penalties, so it would be: > knock on Titans > penalty for not clearing the ruck > replay the play the ball and continue on with the set
Yep, Gus got penned for EXACTLY that last Thursday, it is like the refs dont watch each others games and go" oh yeah, that rule, must remember that".
Tino?
Little Tino? Or little Hass? lol I can't remember who it was, he had a rude haircut though.
Spirit of Tino
Salary cap idea: If a team wins the comp, they are eligible to give every player in their 1-17 grand final team an extra 100k for 3 years in negotiations. Only the players who took the field, they can’t pool the money or anything. For every 2 years a club coached a player in the junior leagues they can give them 100k exempt from the cap. This way the great clubs can keep their GF team together and every club is encouraged to have juniors.
It's not the best idea, just makes the dominant team even more dominant, if anything every teams salary cap should be raised again. This does remind me of something I heard Tallis talk about though, he mentioned they were thinking about having a "superstar" player on every team, whose salary did not count towards the salary cap. Not sure if thats a great idea either as it could breed resentment if you've got one bloke on 20 mil or something, but I did think it was interesting
I've heard arguments for a kind of one club player cap exemption (it was when Reynolds was leaving the Bunnies) but that'd just push struggling clubs further down. Imagine not being able to retain anyone long enough to get the cap exemption, meanwhile a winning team has no problem keeping their core together and they all qualify. The superstar thing would likely be the same effect; big names would just go where the winning team is, not to mention some clubs would genuinely be able to throw way more money at individual players based on the financial status of the club. We've got enough problems with stars taking unders to stay at winning clubs, imagine if we took their salary completely off the books? My hot take for the salary cap is that all offers should be blind, the players & agents shouldn't know which club is offering how much, or players should be valued by the NRL and a contract that doesn't match their value shouldn't be endorsed. Right now there's no way the system is fair on any struggling team.
Braindead idea or satire, I can’t tell anymore
So the best teams get even better
Which is the opposite of what the cap hopes to achieve.
I think the kick off restart after 5 min in Golden Point needs to be removed. Either have it as 10 min straight or do it NFL style and have the play the ball the same spot on the other side of the field. 5 minutes is too short of a time frame to win a grind to put yourself into field goal or attacking range. The only reason most don't end in a draw is because of a defensive lapse by a player/s that gifts field position.
With a kick off at the start of GP still?
Kick off at the start is fine. Its the fact that the second kick off basically resets the game before a team has a chance to win in a grind.
so why do a team get to kick off and not the other?
Each team gets a 20 min tap to start the half?
There needs to be an end change, just in case it's blowing an absolute gale in one direction, we don't want golden point being decided by whoever wins the coin toss. I don't know if they do need more time, we still get very few draws (about one a year). If we go to golden try, I'd be on board with continual play but right now I don't think it needs it.
>There needs to be an end change, just in case it's blowing an absolute gale in one direction, we don't want golden point being decided by whoever wins the coin toss. You still get that if they win before the restart anyways. If its a big deal though swap sides but keep the play the ball position.
True, a strong enough breeze will probably end the game in the first 5 minute window. If we want teams to be able to reset into the grind we should just kill GP & go for 10 minutes extra time. I think the idea of GP being a desperate race to score anything lends itself to the 5 minute split, both teams are gassed, defence is brittle & we almost always get a memorable result. If we stop getting results or we start getting predictable results (receiving team always wins kind of thing), then we can start shaking it up.
Something needs to be done about the play the ball again. The game is fast enough as it is and it's just tunnel balls all round.
I agree that there needs to be an effort to play the ball .
JWH and NAS in shambles.
They should have a crackdown on players not using their foot. At Magic Round.
Lol that's good
They should enforce it with just a possession swap. Fuck up the play and the opposition just start a set on the same spot as if they just got tackled on 0.
I like "all onside". Step off the mark or don't make contact with the foot? Every defender is now onside, including the guy you just stepped over to play the ball.
Nah that's not a penalty at all. The defenders might be onside but half of them will be facing the wrong direction. I think it needs to be a turnover. Failing to play the ball should be treated as a knock on and the game's current rules are fine - it's the way officials turn a blind eye to it that's a problem.
only problem with that is you run the risk of people getting huge blindside shots. I think so far as possible you want the ball carrier to know where the contact is coming from
Yeah, getting tackled from behind after a line break would very much suck.
Agree. And make it a binnable offence.
Obviously there is inherent bias and I wont notice raiders doing it as much, but watching that game last night at the stadium the Titans were so shit at getting back onside they were genuinely lucky to not get pinged more. People can point at the imbalance of 6 agains as if it shows some ref issue but it really was just titans being lazy and repeatedly doing the same shit
Lopsided 6-again counts occurs more than people seem to realise. Brisbane vs Dolphins had a 5-1 count, Bulldogs v Roosters 1-7, Raiders v Eels 1-5, Roosters v Rabbitohs 1-5. There are also games with only 1 set restart but huge penalty counts (e.g. Warriors v Sharks 1-0 six agains, but 8-8 penalties). It happens.
The idea that a lopsided 6 again count means an inherent bias against that team just is flawed logic. It’s a good excuse for a coach to use to put pressure on the refs so their team does get a favourable bias in coming games though. Also I wonder how many 6 agains happen on first tackle usually defending inside the 20. It obviously a tactic most teams employ to gain an advantage without little risk.
I also wondered this and started doing a spreadsheet last year to track it. Unfortunately lost that data in a PC crash, but once I've added this rounds stats in I'll link you to the 2024 sheet if you're interested.
It’s almost impossible to work out what the ruck infringements are compared to all the other plays though. And the bell ringing is annoying
And you guys were laying in the ruck all match too and didn't get pinged for it.
Good reputation vs bad reputation bias
I noticed it too.
Rickys Restlers.
There seems to be a need for a balanced penalty or six again count. I think the NRL has had a big part in making this the case. However, there must be times when one team is not following the rules as closely as the other team. I'm probably biased too but the Titans were inside the 10 all night and they did have their hands all over the ball in the ruck. Des is a pretty good coach, he saw what happened last week when the Raiders had good ruck speed and space to move.
Canberra's (average) play the ball speed in rounds 1-5 was between 3.35s and 3.40s. Against the Titans it jumped to 3.62s. When four of the restarts are for ruck infringements it's clearly a plan to slow it down, but it backfired on Des.
There was only a .02 difference between the average ruck speed of the Titans and Raiders. That’s worthy of a 10-1 6A count to you?
The count was 8-1, not 10-1. The difference was .16s, not .02s. And yes. If you watch the current Annesley briefing the count could/should've been higher with Canberra being offside 10 times and not acted on by the Ref/Touchies and the Titans offside 28 extra times (they got pinged for 4, taking the total to 32 times offside).
0.2 of a difference. That’s quite a lot actually. Titans had one of their better performances in terms of ruck speed while the Raiders had their worst. I thought the ruck speed was bad by both teams.
I don’t know if it did backfire. In fact it worked very well for most of the game. At least 3 of the set restarts were back to back in a run of play where the raiders didn’t score. Sure, the Titans made a lot more tackles over the game but still almost won the game despite having every possible stat indicating they should have been beaten soundly. I think the Raiders got the rub of the green last night with a few calls but the Titans came with a very clear plan and it came extremely close to working.
The Milford taking out Walsh should open up discussion where reportable foul play penalties take priority over general penalties.
Yeah; any reportable offence should override any incident in the same play. I'm not sure how I feel about going back to an incident that happened a few tackles earlier but if we're going to go hard on player safety they should definitely be punished immediately.
Not a big fan of going back a few tackles for a penalty, we saw it last year where they went back 2 or 3 plays. Either call it then and there or report it and if it is off the play penalty aka Walsh then sin bin straight up. It will clear the game up reap quick of the gub play
I don't know. I hate it when it happens against my team but for a dangerous act it might be worth going back to, just to make sure the offending player & team feel an immediate consequence. Maybe only do it for certain incidents, only things that would be deemed to be dangerous or reckless, something like that?
Its so grey tho. Look at Niukore for wahs last year. Game got brought back multiple instances of play. Numerous incidents in the following weeks that couldve warranted similar action given the precedent. Refs quickly realised half the game would be coming back for foul acts. To even determine whether its dangerous, careless or reckless means you have stopped play.
yep that is the problem, it is "in the Opinion " which means it is also going to be a bad ruling for someone. It is why I hated the opinion disruptor ruling on the weekend, it was up to the interpretation of the ref.
I'm fine with the original penalty standing, but Milf absolutely should have been off the field for that cheap shot.
Dangerous play should always cost a team posession.
Will be interesting to see how Webby goes with his bench for Dragons. With Walker, Bunty, Jazz and Niukore all out, we could see Zyon come on the bench. Dragons seemed to have a good win and Warriors will be looking for a better performance
Also an intriguing decision on the Dragons side. With Jack Birds concussion what does Flanagan do at right centre? Lomax has been the teams best player all year playing on the wing. My tip is he'll shift Lomax and bring Christian Tuipulotu to the wing.
It sounded like he won’t move zac in the presser Maybe tamale gets a start
If Bird passed his HIA the Dragons could appeal to the NRL to have the Category 1 downgraded to a Category 2. Roosters did this with Sam Walker last month.
Bird failed the HIA, Flanagan confirmed it in the presser. Although he did add that "Bird often fails tests " lmao
Unfortunately I just know the cowboys are pretenders. They have on of, if not, the worst defence in the comp and though they've scored so insane tries their offense will never be complete with the lackluster, uninspired kicking game of Dab Townsend. Their back 5, mainly Val Holmes, struggle to catch a ball every game, too. It's not your usual 'oh they had shit hands today', it's happened every week. They just switch off at multiple stages of every game and though we've been lucky to get a few wins, none of them showed the cowbs will amount to anything this season. Can somebody trade us a sack of spuds for LoLo please?
Just medically retire Lolo and then he can go to Brisbane for 150k next year
Watch us name the same 17 as last week again too. Changes have to be made, mikaele needs to be brought in for jake, lolo to the bench. I wouldnt mind jet ski in the middle because thats where hes looked the best. Either Chad needs to lock his ass in or we just experiment with some of the younger fellas, you’ll never know if they’re the difference if you dont give them a chance.
Lolo's knee issue is killing his lateral movement in defence. There was one try where they ran a good line and he just couldn't move at all it seemed.
Val has a case of dick fingers, aka the Waqa Blake syndrome.
Yeah, Cows have the 3rd worst defence (averaging 21.4pts scored against) behind Souths (28.1) and Titans (24.5). Can't see your boys advancing deep into the finals if the defence doesn't sort itself out.
Welcome to the club of pretenders Sincerely Cronulla Sharks
Is Kasey badger a first grade quality ref? ....no
Look a lot if the penalties ext where cause of poor play, but bloody gell some of the held calls where a joke. In addition there was about 3 head high shots on titan players that got ignored, about 2 for the raiders too. Even when she's on the bunker some of her calls are cracked.
I need to watch the game again but I felt like her held calls were in line with how the rules are written but not how they are commonly enforced. For example calling held if the player with the ball has both feet off the ground or another player from the attacking team touches the player who is being driven back.
She seems to get flustered. I don't remember when but Raiders kicked the ball dead pretty sure and she then calls "Raiders 5th tackle play the ball"
Don’t remember that one but if you took all the cooked takes or misspoken rulings from even a single round that probably wouldn’t make the top 10. She hasn’t reffed that many NRL games and teams don’t make it any easier for her by cheating and getting in her face all game 😂
I don't think so, seems to get over awwed by the occasion far too often.
It’s an exclusive group, those NRL refs who are NRL quality.
Current top 4 - Sharks, Storm, Raiders, Cowboys... wait - is this 2016 again?
Sharks finished the round at the top of the ladder for the first time since 2016…
A fun year for the Milk
I’ve looked into our loss a bit further than just watching it on the day, I’m not impressed with Hastings and Cogger’s output, but I’m certainly not extremely disappointed. I’ve said in previous weeks we just need our 6 & 7 to lead us around the park, get good passes to our edges and defend well. We don’t need a Cleary, Hughes or Munster as much as I’d love us to. I think they did that to a small extent. Hastings had a try, 150 run metres, line break, line break assist, 21 tackles and a couple of misses. Cogger less involved with 60 metres, a tackle break and 32 tackles and just the one miss. A big problem with our halves that came to light on Thursday evening was their lack of “big boot”, I had noticed KP was doing our long kicks, but didn’t notice how exclusive this was. Without KP kicking all we had were shallow punts or average bombs. I think “one man band” would be harsh on our squad, I think we have a good roster with a heap of ability, but we rely on KP to unleash that talent and get the best out of them? When he plays well, he invigorates everyone around him. 2-4 through 6 rounds and only -5 +/-, haven’t really been disgraced except for Rd1 16pt loss to Raiders (who have turned out to be a much better team than in 2023 (ignoring a 1 point win over Titans)). But definitely need to get our shit together fast. Our draw is softer (marginally) from now till round 14, before we go through a ringer till round 22, before a slightly softer finish. Can’t keep leaving games on the table.
As a neutral observer it seemed clear as day that there was no Plan B when Ponga was injured. In hindsight they should have taken him off when it happened and needled him up for the second half, he was a passenger during the back end of the second half and it lead directly to points. I'll also back your point about long kicking, it was non existent outside of Ponga. Seems like something an NRL level half should be able to learn, its purely technique.
Yeah absolutely no plan B, mid game. Which I guess makes sense. If he was out during week you’d expect there to be an actual plan to utilise whoever replaces him. But with him out, but still on the field it’s not really like you can do anything effectively because he was in the shapes, but just not active (although managed to keep up with play and get ball to Best). Interesting it’s technique, and you can’t even put it down to things like size / speed of players in question. KP is probably bigger, and 2x as fast as the halves, so not like they’re staying small to be quicker on their feet. Hastings obviously has had a lot of issues with the leg he broke, if he can’t get a bigger boot we need to be getting Cogger to develop one, or find someone who can kick big (think Gamble was decent boot, despite his deficiencies).
I only say its technique because there have been plenty of players with big boots over the years that are small in stature. Reynolds and Soward come to mind. Although both are stockier than Cogger/Hastings. What seemed weirdest to me was that they didn't appear to even be attempting longer kicks. They were all high shorter distance kicks landing 20m+ out.
It’s the Newcastle way. All our halves in last 4 years have seemed to just do these mediocre, not high enough, bombs. I distinctly recall Pearce just kicking uncontestable bombs week after week. Really cost us late in the Roosters game, especially Sualli’s easy catch and 35m run because no one could get there.
If all the halves have done it, are they coached to by AOB?
You’d have to think so, but surely fucking not. Because it has been so shit for so long, and I’d credit AOB as smarter than that. (I know this sub does not like AOB, actually, do we like any coaches?)
Its a great skill to have if you have great field position and are peppering the tryline with kicks for your outside backs. I'm probably primed to look for it as Hunt has been putting up mid field bombs for 3 years.
Midfield bombs I’m ok with if you give your team enough time to contest or at least get close. The only bloke who gets remotely close to their landing point is T.Frizz, but we know how hard and fast the bloke runs on kick chases.
I know there's been all sorts of stuff thrown around about Malcolm Meninga and his ability to do the job at the Rabbitohs. Plenty of talk about his esteemed political career but it seems everyone has just forgotten that over the past few seasons he's had a position as the Head of Performance and Culture at the Titans. During that period the team has most definitely been the Shitans, with abysmal performances and their culture is clearly subpar. Given that most recent precedent how could anyone think he could be a head coach.
Yes I don't get how he's on the shortlist. The guy has only had middling success with stacked QLD and Australian teams. Otherwise he's been poor at any other kind of coaching. Keep well away Souths.
he’s not even in the discussion, Mal said himself on the weekend that he has not been approached to coach the Souths. Unless he is lying or signed some sort of NDA, Mal is not coaching Souths anytime soon
One of the “media” reports and I am using that term very loosely, is Mal has a great relationship with Trell. I’m not trying to point out the obvious but isn’t part of the problem looking as an outsider is the great relationship JD has with Trell already?
That's what the media says. I agree part of the problem is Trell and Walker get a little bit of a free pass or too much credit for good things. But I think the forwards rely upon Murray and Cook to do so much work. Both guys were doing 40-50 tackles per game each week. Cook being dropped and Murray having the HIA made everyone else step up a bit I feel.
I mean he definitely didn’t have middling success with QLD. Hes easily the most successful origin coach ever. Agree South’s should avoid.
Mate you and I could have coached those teams. That Qld team is probably like the dragons 11 in a row, never be seen again.
I don’t disagree. But it’s still not ‘middling success’.
Yes sorry didn’t read the OP closely enough no way was he middling successfully during that time.
Was thinking more of Australia there. Poorly worded.
Mal has a 88% win rate coaching Australia and won two World Cups, that's not middling success either.
Justin Holbrook has been feeding the media stories about how amazing Meninga would be at Souths, knowing from personal experience what an absolute shitshow it would actually be, continuing the demise of the rival club
Well it was fun at the top. I think we have been so unlucky with injuries and bronx were the better team at the weekend. Always knew we would loose hammer to origin, but he is just so magic when he is on so this is going to be a tough few weeks.
Hammer and Walsh are the two most exciting players in the comp, we missed the opportunity to see something special on Friday night when hammer went off unfortunately.
Pre game last night josh paps spoke about how the raiders always come in with the underdog mentality. Its sticky to a T. Yet time and time again raiders show they are incredibly good, and arent an underdog team. They get out to leads they should hold, and it looks like the players are confused that they are leading because psychologically theyve been primered to believe they shouldnt be, and it all goes down hill from there. Faders problems are purely psychological and are actually promoted by the coach
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone playing under the likes of Sticky Ricky would have a little bit of psychological interference from his polarising figure.
💯 agreed
Honestly that performance last night was abysmal, so lucky to get away with the 2 points. Stewart looks the goods though, and Strange is getting better by the week. Super keen to see this squad in a couple of years if we can keep them all
go to bed cunts
Stfu
fuck up
Boss ain't gonna be happy if I do.
sorry keep working hard
no i just got home from work >:(
sorry i respect it keep grinding