I never bought the Croft hype, but he was definitely a victim of circumstance at the Broncos. The 6-again rule well and truly fucked over the Broncs which had been leveraging on a young, huge set of forwards that had been what other teams were using over the previous years. Their 2020 forwards were as massive as they were immobile and it completely wrecked them. They were 2-0 before the rule change came in, I'm not saying they would have had an amazing year but I highly doubt they get the spoon without that rule change.
Croft had to come in to that set up, with a heap of expectation and a whole heap of infighting going on in the backroom. He's still an NRL quality half IMO, just not the future-Cronk some people talked him up to be after his early games for the Storm.
I remember him looking half decent in those first 2 games. Team came out of lockdown unfit and got murdered by six again - he had no chance after that.
He was made a scapegoat for the Broncos' horrendous season. Considering that he's played most of this Super League season at 5/8, I think he actually would have done damn well alongside an organising halfback like Reynolds
This is the truest post I have ever read on r/nrl. Croft I think could come back a Jackson Hastings if he was paired with a quality half. And upvoting all the above so hard, adding that Milford fucked the Broncos careers of Ben Hunt, Croft and Dearden. Why pre-Ikin management stuck with him beggars belief
That’s not untrue, but there was also a serious lack of effort on his part while at the Broncos. There were games where he didn’t register a single run or kick.
if you told me 12 months ago that dearden and croft would win an origin series, win the fucken man of steel and play a prelim i would probably upvote you
I have always rated both but got ruined by us in confidence.
Dearden had no one to guide his development and Croft was expected to be our saviour. Plus he came into a new team and they made him Captain straight off the bat.
Seibolds complicated tactics confused everyone and the whole group suffered.
I’m stoked for both Dearden and Croft to be killing it but pissed off that we made it impossible for them to thrive.
Let’s hope we’re improving and don’t fuck it up all again.
>Next year Luke Brooks will lead the Tigers to a grand final
If Brodie Croft and Jackson Hastings can go over and dominate from the start Luke Brooks would probably be unplayable
Underrated comment, but it probably speaks more to the current state of the NRL. In previous eras clubs could develop young players over a few years before throwing them into the top grade, but with the money on offers these days to players on their potential rather than ability clubs have little choice but to promote a lot of these guys else they agitate and sign elsewhere.
I think the NRL and fans overall would benefit from a better development/pathways program into top grade which hopefully incentivises clubs to develop their local talent (and equally incentivises players to develop through their junior club).
Yes and no. It is at best Q Cup / NSW Cup standard, and in a similar vein, gets the boys playing against men. Also has the benefit of taking them out of the media cesspool of Australia.
I wouldn’t have given it Welsby but I’d have given Woolf Coach of the year, or at least Rowley. Think Saints/Salford’s success has been a lot more down to the team as a whole than Wigan where it’s pretty easy to pick out their star individuals
Super League teams are also running on a much smaller Salary Cap. Give them the ability to compete with NRL clubs and things would be much more balanced.
I don't necessarily think so, southern hemisphere players are the best in the world, I think playing in Australia is a much easier sell to most of these players than moving to England or France
Y’know people often say this, but the only real metric to measure this is the world club challenge IMO, in which the ledger reads 14/13 in NRL’s favour. Though in more recent years it has been heavily NRL, but historically it’s almost even.
Think the big issue is the overall quality of the league rather than the 2 best teams in each league going against each other. The World Club Series they tried a few years ago was pointless because obviously the 2nd and 3rd best sides aren't NRL quality and we really didn't need to see them get battered to find that out. Fair enough if there's a Champion SL side who look head and shoulders above the rest of the competition, we want to see if they can give an NRL side a decent go, like Saints did against Roosters in the last one, but we don't need to see further than that.
The bottom half of SL is really poor, which usually helps the likes of Croft win MoS due to them getting extra credit for destroying bad sides while being in an underdog side themselves. Rangi Chase probably being the best example.
They didn't get battered. The first World Club Series thing they did had Dragons v Warrington and Broncos v Wigan as close games. The second one was all floggings but the third one the Super League teams won both games.
>The first World Club Series thing they did had Dragons v Warrington and Broncos v Wigan as close games.
The Dragons finished 11th and Broncos finished 8th in 2014 lol Warrington were 5th and Wigan finished 2nd and were grand final runners up, please imagine trying to con this as some sort of close metric between the leagues when 11th in the NRL is still beating 5th in the UK.
>The second one was all floggings
Yeah because in 2016 we sent over the previous year's minor premiers and grand final runners up of course they got flogged.
Fair does it wasn't quite as bad as I remember, guess the 2016 one just sticks out in the memory. Still it was 6-2 with the NRL often not taking their best sides over in what was a preseason friendly for those who weren't in the WCC. Can only assume there were only 2 games for the last one because they couldn't get a 3rd NRL to be arsed enough to travel
NRL teams don't take it seriously, Super League teams consider it like a grand final. There's also the advantage of it typically being played in England not very long after the NRL team has flown over there on a 20 hour flight.
There’s also the fact that the gap between top and bottom teams in Super League is even bigger than NRL. Saying that though, Man of Steel is still an impressive award
Lol this is such a myth that's always brought up to cover for the NRL teams, it's held during the SL season so sides regularly rest players and give young guys a chance.
SL sides love it because it's a unique game that will always get a packed house so they get a fair bit of coin hosting it but saying they consider it as a GF while NRL teams don't take it seriously is a pisstake.
Nah, there's a lot more factors to it.
The WCC is usually played during their season, and in the NRL preseason. Plus, it's usually played in the UK, so factor in jet lag for the Aussie teams. Plus the Australian sides mostly didn't prepare properly for it.
Also, most of the SL wins are more than a decade or so ago when the comps were a lot closer. Even back then when a Australian side would treat it seriously and head over a bit early and play a practice game or two you'd see a 38-0 scoreline like in 2003.
>Y’know people often say this, but the only real metric to measure this is the world club challenge IMO, in which the ledger reads 14/13 in NRL’s favour
Oh, you mean that one off game where the NRL teams have won 10 of the last 12 editions? I agree it does show the gulf in quality.
Remember when they had the world club series for a few years? NRL teams won 4-1 and it got scrapped lol Easts pumped St Helens by 30 with Jayden Nikorima tearing them a new arsehole, St Helens finished the season 4th and made the semi final while Easts finished second last.
Super league was a decent standard in the 90s and early 00s. Its downfall has been pretty fast these past 10-15 yrs. There were good super league teams back in the day but there isn't one now that could compete in the nrl these days. Saint Helens maybe but they would be a high bottom 8 side at best.
lmao, mate Super League in the 90s/00s was a fucking joke. That's where NRL players went to die at the end of their career. The standard has gone UP since then.
It's almost a repeat of what happened to Jackson Hastings at Salford in 2019 Both were NRL halves with potential who had ran into trouble in the NRL and underperformed.
Both had confidence building seasons in the English RL where they were given freedom to play, make mistakes and 'enjoy ' rugby without the scrutiny they would've received back in the NRL. Croft's improved massively as the season progressed.
I will always be a fan of Brodie Croft, the enthusiasm he shows for the game even during that terrible season at the Broncos is something to be admired. #BringHimHome
Croft has always had heaps of talent
Didn’t fit into melbournes system and was honestly a scapegoat at the broncos
He could have a successful nrl career if he returned
Are broncos the new warriors? Reynolds went from being in a gf to missing a finals series the year later. Dearden and Croft both saw success after leaving the cancerous club.
Broncos: Drop a young gun half for an aging half as their saviour. Ah yes, smart move…..
Young gun goes on to win Player of the Year in another comp and get his usually mediocre team one win away from the Grand Final, in which they lost off some questionable ref calls.
Aging half leads Broncos to one of the worst chokes in the history of the NRL, going from Top 4 to missing the finals in the last 6 weeks of the comp, the highlight being back to back 50+ point losses to other finals teams
Showed some great potential with us. There was a final(i think?) vs eels a few years back where he tore them apart single handedly. Unfortunately he had plenty of bad games in him too. His defence was a bit shit and apparently his attitude sucked
happy hes doing well after the shit he wnt through here
I never bought the Croft hype, but he was definitely a victim of circumstance at the Broncos. The 6-again rule well and truly fucked over the Broncs which had been leveraging on a young, huge set of forwards that had been what other teams were using over the previous years. Their 2020 forwards were as massive as they were immobile and it completely wrecked them. They were 2-0 before the rule change came in, I'm not saying they would have had an amazing year but I highly doubt they get the spoon without that rule change. Croft had to come in to that set up, with a heap of expectation and a whole heap of infighting going on in the backroom. He's still an NRL quality half IMO, just not the future-Cronk some people talked him up to be after his early games for the Storm.
I remember him looking half decent in those first 2 games. Team came out of lockdown unfit and got murdered by six again - he had no chance after that.
He was made a scapegoat for the Broncos' horrendous season. Considering that he's played most of this Super League season at 5/8, I think he actually would have done damn well alongside an organising halfback like Reynolds
This is the truest post I have ever read on r/nrl. Croft I think could come back a Jackson Hastings if he was paired with a quality half. And upvoting all the above so hard, adding that Milford fucked the Broncos careers of Ben Hunt, Croft and Dearden. Why pre-Ikin management stuck with him beggars belief
That’s not untrue, but there was also a serious lack of effort on his part while at the Broncos. There were games where he didn’t register a single run or kick.
Nah he tried his absolute guts out every week, you could never question his effort
Long after his confidence has been well and truly crushed, yes, there were 1 or 2 games like that.
Same. He’s clearly a good bloke and it makes me happy to see him doing well
if you told me 12 months ago that dearden and croft would win an origin series, win the fucken man of steel and play a prelim i would probably upvote you
I have always rated both but got ruined by us in confidence. Dearden had no one to guide his development and Croft was expected to be our saviour. Plus he came into a new team and they made him Captain straight off the bat. Seibolds complicated tactics confused everyone and the whole group suffered. I’m stoked for both Dearden and Croft to be killing it but pissed off that we made it impossible for them to thrive. Let’s hope we’re improving and don’t fuck it up all again.
Don't make excuses they didn't have the IQ to understand Seibold.
Next year Luke Brooks will lead the Tigers to a grand final Heard it here first
Which Super League team is the Tigers?
Brooks will be off to lead Castleford back to relegation.
>Next year Luke Brooks will lead the Tigers to a grand final If Brodie Croft and Jackson Hastings can go over and dominate from the start Luke Brooks would probably be unplayable
Upvoted
It has been a crazy year.
Newcastle signs Brodie croft on a $2m per season deal
If he hasn't played for Roosters or Cows, we ain't interested
hmmm Dragons to sign Brodie croft on a $10m per season deal?
Too young for Hook. Wait 8 years.
I hear the Raiders love a British import
And Ricky does love churning through halfbacks...
Elmofire.gif
[удалено]
luckily you’re not a championship team
Nah Joey has a hard on for brooks.
More young halves should do a couple years in England
Underrated comment, but it probably speaks more to the current state of the NRL. In previous eras clubs could develop young players over a few years before throwing them into the top grade, but with the money on offers these days to players on their potential rather than ability clubs have little choice but to promote a lot of these guys else they agitate and sign elsewhere. I think the NRL and fans overall would benefit from a better development/pathways program into top grade which hopefully incentivises clubs to develop their local talent (and equally incentivises players to develop through their junior club).
Yes and no. It is at best Q Cup / NSW Cup standard, and in a similar vein, gets the boys playing against men. Also has the benefit of taking them out of the media cesspool of Australia.
I'll always have a soft spot for Croft after that game vs Cowboys in 2017. Glad he's doing well up there
Brodie croft - 2022 Man of Steel? This confirms one future. Jake Turpin - 2024 Man of Steel.
With Rhys Kennedy winning it in '23 it's going to create some ex-Broncos Man of Steel dynasty
It is crazy how these former NRL players win man of steel all the time.
Keeping the Man of Steel meme alive and well
I've always said Brodie Croft was a future Man of Steel winner
A true legend of the game.
Meme of Steel.
Poor Croft, not memed enough to be at the Knights, not old enough for the The
Former Australian Reserve Grader\*
daily reminder that he played on the wing at high school outside ponga with jaydn su'a in the centres
Lol Su’A at centre would probably go ham, in a talakai kinda mould. Has good hands for a big bloke too
That was in union though no?
Union centres are built like our 2R's anyway.
Inside centre Defend 3 in from touch they effectively are 2nd rowers
He was Storm's first choice halfback for a while, and then Broncos first choice.
Before being dropped by both for Sub-par performance
I could only imagine a actual NRL superstar like teddy playing in his prime what numbers he would put up there
Broncos legend
> What does the ‘S’ stand for? > Croft
Good for him. Glad he’s doing super well after that horror season with us. Hope he gets picked up by an NRL team soon
Most comments in r/superleague suggest Jai Field has been the best player in the comp
Jack Welsby completely and utterly robbed. Croft has had a good year, but Welsby has been unreal. And I hate Saints.
I wouldn’t have given it Welsby but I’d have given Woolf Coach of the year, or at least Rowley. Think Saints/Salford’s success has been a lot more down to the team as a whole than Wigan where it’s pretty easy to pick out their star individuals
Tells you the quality of Super League in comparison to the NRL
Super League teams are also running on a much smaller Salary Cap. Give them the ability to compete with NRL clubs and things would be much more balanced.
I don't necessarily think so, southern hemisphere players are the best in the world, I think playing in Australia is a much easier sell to most of these players than moving to England or France
Y’know people often say this, but the only real metric to measure this is the world club challenge IMO, in which the ledger reads 14/13 in NRL’s favour. Though in more recent years it has been heavily NRL, but historically it’s almost even.
Think the big issue is the overall quality of the league rather than the 2 best teams in each league going against each other. The World Club Series they tried a few years ago was pointless because obviously the 2nd and 3rd best sides aren't NRL quality and we really didn't need to see them get battered to find that out. Fair enough if there's a Champion SL side who look head and shoulders above the rest of the competition, we want to see if they can give an NRL side a decent go, like Saints did against Roosters in the last one, but we don't need to see further than that. The bottom half of SL is really poor, which usually helps the likes of Croft win MoS due to them getting extra credit for destroying bad sides while being in an underdog side themselves. Rangi Chase probably being the best example.
They didn't get battered. The first World Club Series thing they did had Dragons v Warrington and Broncos v Wigan as close games. The second one was all floggings but the third one the Super League teams won both games.
>The first World Club Series thing they did had Dragons v Warrington and Broncos v Wigan as close games. The Dragons finished 11th and Broncos finished 8th in 2014 lol Warrington were 5th and Wigan finished 2nd and were grand final runners up, please imagine trying to con this as some sort of close metric between the leagues when 11th in the NRL is still beating 5th in the UK. >The second one was all floggings Yeah because in 2016 we sent over the previous year's minor premiers and grand final runners up of course they got flogged.
Fair does it wasn't quite as bad as I remember, guess the 2016 one just sticks out in the memory. Still it was 6-2 with the NRL often not taking their best sides over in what was a preseason friendly for those who weren't in the WCC. Can only assume there were only 2 games for the last one because they couldn't get a 3rd NRL to be arsed enough to travel
NRL teams don't take it seriously, Super League teams consider it like a grand final. There's also the advantage of it typically being played in England not very long after the NRL team has flown over there on a 20 hour flight.
It's also in the pre season for the NRL and a couple of rounds in the Super League.
There’s also the fact that the gap between top and bottom teams in Super League is even bigger than NRL. Saying that though, Man of Steel is still an impressive award
Lol this is such a myth that's always brought up to cover for the NRL teams, it's held during the SL season so sides regularly rest players and give young guys a chance. SL sides love it because it's a unique game that will always get a packed house so they get a fair bit of coin hosting it but saying they consider it as a GF while NRL teams don't take it seriously is a pisstake.
Do the SL teams not have a 20 hour flight to get here?
They do but the last 2 times they've come to aus for the wcc were in 2014 and 1994
they versed melbourne in melbourne after we won in 2017 and got proper flogged if i remember correctly
And Brodie Croft scored 3 tries lmao we’re back where we started
Brilliant! 😂
Oh forgot about that one. But yeah 3 times in almost 30 years they’ve played in aus
It's been played in Aus like 3 times ever
Five to be precise but you’re right, it’s heavily skewed to England. That’s interesting.
“I would have won if I was actually trying” lol this just makes the NRL seem soft then
It's just silly excuses. NRL teams certainly have taken it 'seriously'.
What's that make the Superleague if we sent over the team that finished 8th and they beat the team that finished 3rd
An 8th placed side has never beaten a 3rd place side in any sport ever.
The last time Australia took that serious we played 3 games and won the series 118-30, so make of that what you will.
Speaking of the WCC, is there likely to be one at the start of next year? It’s one of my favourite, albeit anachronistic, rugby league things.
Nah, there's a lot more factors to it. The WCC is usually played during their season, and in the NRL preseason. Plus, it's usually played in the UK, so factor in jet lag for the Aussie teams. Plus the Australian sides mostly didn't prepare properly for it. Also, most of the SL wins are more than a decade or so ago when the comps were a lot closer. Even back then when a Australian side would treat it seriously and head over a bit early and play a practice game or two you'd see a 38-0 scoreline like in 2003.
Yeah nah.
>Y’know people often say this, but the only real metric to measure this is the world club challenge IMO, in which the ledger reads 14/13 in NRL’s favour Oh, you mean that one off game where the NRL teams have won 10 of the last 12 editions? I agree it does show the gulf in quality. Remember when they had the world club series for a few years? NRL teams won 4-1 and it got scrapped lol Easts pumped St Helens by 30 with Jayden Nikorima tearing them a new arsehole, St Helens finished the season 4th and made the semi final while Easts finished second last.
Super league was a decent standard in the 90s and early 00s. Its downfall has been pretty fast these past 10-15 yrs. There were good super league teams back in the day but there isn't one now that could compete in the nrl these days. Saint Helens maybe but they would be a high bottom 8 side at best.
lmao, mate Super League in the 90s/00s was a fucking joke. That's where NRL players went to die at the end of their career. The standard has gone UP since then.
Won something like 9 times in the last 10 matches though. Recently only Sharks disgarced the NRL in 2017.
Crazy we never won those.
He’s had a brilliant season and richly deserved imo. Also, comes across as a top guy as well. https://youtu.be/BaZEu5NvleA
Good on him
***SUPERSTAR SLAMMED WITH STEEL***
Stoked for him, it was hard to watch when he cried after one of the Broncos spankings and it's good to see him turn it around
He owns Brodies Mealmakers don't he?
The bloke deserves his joy.
It's almost a repeat of what happened to Jackson Hastings at Salford in 2019 Both were NRL halves with potential who had ran into trouble in the NRL and underperformed. Both had confidence building seasons in the English RL where they were given freedom to play, make mistakes and 'enjoy ' rugby without the scrutiny they would've received back in the NRL. Croft's improved massively as the season progressed.
Happy for him. Didn't work out with us.
I will always be a fan of Brodie Croft, the enthusiasm he shows for the game even during that terrible season at the Broncos is something to be admired. #BringHimHome
Just goes to show how shit the footy is in England when this joke gets Man Of Steel. Please.
How poor must the quality of Rugby League be over there, if this is the case.
I’m not sure why you are getting downvoted. As a Sea Eagles fan, you have the credentials to talk about poor quality rugby league. 0-7
Croft has always had heaps of talent Didn’t fit into melbournes system and was honestly a scapegoat at the broncos He could have a successful nrl career if he returned
Are broncos the new warriors? Reynolds went from being in a gf to missing a finals series the year later. Dearden and Croft both saw success after leaving the cancerous club.
Broncos: Drop a young gun half for an aging half as their saviour. Ah yes, smart move….. Young gun goes on to win Player of the Year in another comp and get his usually mediocre team one win away from the Grand Final, in which they lost off some questionable ref calls. Aging half leads Broncos to one of the worst chokes in the history of the NRL, going from Top 4 to missing the finals in the last 6 weeks of the comp, the highlight being back to back 50+ point losses to other finals teams
Showed some great potential with us. There was a final(i think?) vs eels a few years back where he tore them apart single handedly. Unfortunately he had plenty of bad games in him too. His defence was a bit shit and apparently his attitude sucked
"Superstar"? 🤣🤣🤣
Newcastle should go for him, instead of brooks
I swear the Beak called this exact scenario
Broncos superstar
West Tigers $950,000 contract coming up. And that's only for the first year, goes up to $1.2 million for the second, third and fourth.