2021 NRL Season

Dale Copley emptying his pockets tonight;





Cribb to see deleted post

 

Listening to Anthony Griffin last night and he's not the first or only one to say it I hear it quite often but he said the intercept was a 12 point turn around.

It's such a flawed level of thinking, this assumption that going for an intercept is always a high risk play that if not taken must've meant it was going to result in a try for your team. No it was just a terrible pass, if go back and watch the try Naden is retreating in defence his last movement before taking the intercept was a step backwards, it was just a terrible pass and a very costly error form your team, that was was never going to hit your winger because the pass was thrown straight at Naden, best case scenario Naden drops the ball and you get lucky to get another set. There was no magical 12pt turn around. If you're going to play that deep into the line with such a flat attack you're going to get picked off every now and then, delusional.

 

Roosters being $1.25 against a side competing for the top 8 is such a poor reflection on the level of competition at the moment.

Roosters will be missing their whole starting forward pack quite literally 8.Collins 9.Friend 10.JWH 11.Cordner 12.Crichton 13.Radley, 2 key outside backs and IMO their most important player in Keary + numerous other injuries to squad players.

Seen a lot of people suggesting Trent Robinson should get coach of the year and I get it, he’s done tremendously well to remain competitive but in all seriousness the Roosters coming 4th is just a representation of just how uncompetitive the league is becoming across the whole 16 clubs IMO. I can’t recall a season where there’s been such a discrepancy between the best and then the next tier down of teams.

There seems to be this mid-table group of just incompetence followed by a bottom table group of absolute shit.

Watching Tyson Gamble Vs Drew Hutchinson last Friday night was fucking painful.

I wonder if Gus is right in his assessment that the removal of the Under 20’s competition in 2017 is really starting to show its affects in the top grade.

 

See I think Flanagan is probably at a very similar level to Arthur and I’m not really sure change for the sake of change is going to improve anything, I get it’s been 8 years of Arthur and you probably want to see something change but I reckon that change needs to come at a pathway and development level rather than head coaching. Defensive issues on the edges seem to be a continual problem you’re right but surely you just go out and recruit a decent defensive coach to help Arthur with that, or just change your recruitment strategy. Parra seem to love recruiting three-quarters who love to come up and jam in but clearly don’t fit Arthur’s defensive style.

Last thing Parramatta need right now IMO is a coach coming in deciding he’s going to take a couple of years building his own side, only to realise a couple of seasons on you’re back in the same position or worse with a group of players all entering their late 20’s. I call it the Anthony Seibold illusion.

See if you were able to pick up someone like Wayne Bennett then I think he’d be a fantastic signing for a couple of seasons as he could gloss over some of the cracks, but if you can’t then there’s no obvious standout candidate. Alternatively Parramatta need to go back and look at some of the root causes affecting the clubs success rather than just changing the head coaching gig. I still maintain their biggest issue is recruiting such a significant part of their top 17 players externally, you’ve got to get value out of players before you have to start paying them market value that’s how you build a good squad.

 

Souths Vs Panthers this week is such an intriguing game.

Pretty sure I called Souths flat track bullies last year and they’ve earnt the title again this year for mine.

It’s a really intriguing game because Penrith have obviously been an absolute shadow of themselves for what feels like the past 2-3 months now, however they’re still very capable of clicking it all into gear again it’s just a matter of whether they can put it all together before the finals series.

Cody Walker with 34 try assists & 51 line break assists in 20 games is just absolute cheat codes. Only Tommy Turbo has a better record based on games played.

If Penrith show up how they’ve been the last few months Souths need to put them to the sword however I’m hoping Penrith will step up and make a game out of it and we’ll get to see whether Souths are the real deal or not.

 

Panthers just a level above, took a while to click into gear but scored 25 unanswered points to run away with the game. 2nd half was absolute domination, Souths with only 9 play the balls in Penrith's half all 2nd half... that's insane field position.

Given Penrith still have their best forward, To'o & Leniu to return + losing Edwards at the beginning of the game and having to re-shuffle it's easy to see where they get better moving forward. Hard to see where Souths get better, Reynolds kicking game in that 2nd half was horrendous, Mansour and Mitchell always had issues defusing bombs.. as a combo they're junior footy level, forward pack really struggled.

Stormers Vs Panthers again this year for mine. Manly the dark horse who could spring an upset.