BlackWhiteGold
Well-known member
Really good. A real leader in this team, all effort with skill & footy IQ as well. Just needs to add a bit of size & strength but he will.
BlackWhiteGold
Well-known member
Lock - ball player & ball runner in the one package. Great prospect.
Tigerstigerstigers
Well-known member
Exactly what we need
I liken Archie to Josh King at Melbourne Storm.
Very similar in physique and plays very similar in my opinion.
It’s unlikely he will become a star player, but he is a hard working, all effort, nuts and bolts type of player that compliments a team who has some class players.
davey_farrell
Well-known member
Watched Cooper Clark today, how in the world did we let that gun go??
Where would you like me to start….. 😆
davey_farrell
Well-known member
Haha gold!! I feel your pain
We need a few of those in our first grade. We really don't have many toilers apart from Twal.
Blake Van Drie definitely has good potential.
He plays with high energy, is never far from the ball, has decent ball playing ability and is a natural onfield leader.
You can see he has added some size and muscle to his slight frame over the past 12 months, but he still needs to add some more to allow him to have a more physical presence on both sides of the ball.
Not sure if he is quite as quick and not sure if he can become near as aggressive or physical, but I see similarities between he and a younger version of Tallis Duncan. If Van Drie can develop into even close to the player Duncan has become, we will have a good one on our hands.
He plays with high energy, is never far from the ball, has decent ball playing ability and is a natural onfield leader.
You can see he has added some size and muscle to his slight frame over the past 12 months, but he still needs to add some more to allow him to have a more physical presence on both sides of the ball.
Not sure if he is quite as quick and not sure if he can become near as aggressive or physical, but I see similarities between he and a younger version of Tallis Duncan. If Van Drie can develop into even close to the player Duncan has become, we will have a good one on our hands.
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Tauaifaiga’s is a whole hearted player who always plays physical, rips in and is not afraid to hit top speed quickly with his ball carries, but I don’t think he has enough speed or attacking flair to overcome his short and smallish stature to allow him to become a genuine NRL centre prospect.
I would be looking at a radical positional switch for him.
Mitch Taotua has had a very disappointing season coming off what was a very promising season in 2025.
He has all the physical attributes including plenty of size, speed and aggression to become a top class centre, but for some reason he only shows his attacking quality very sparingly and he is not improving his defensive issues.
He desperately needs a coach to fire him up and make him realise the talent he will be wasting if he does not rip in on both sides of the ball for the full 80 minutes each game he plays.
It’s a case of needing Tauaifaga’s desire in Mitch Taotua’s body.
I think we need to fast track Glassie Glassie as a centre. He too has defensive issues he needs to work on and fix, but he is an attacking powerhouse who puts a bit of fear into his opponents with almost every ball carry.
Archie in my opinion always stood out, very focused player and person, raw boned.
million dollar question on both brothers??
Van Drie does a lot of work on his game, just needs time to develop and experience,
There has been a big drop off this year throw the lower grades, the b/s from first grade negativity was worked its magic.
I’m not sure anything happening at NRL level can be blamed for a lack of intent or desire in young emerging players.
Like life in general, it’s the person themselves who is most responsible for their actions, but I will say a good coach or coaching staff who will relentlessly work on the mental side of each players game and particularly focus on fixing problem areas and maximising the potential in players can often be a big help. It doesn’t always help as some players simply have a personality that cannot accept criticism to allow them to identity problem areas and improve.
As for assistant coaches in our lower grades to focus on the problem areas and work on the mental state of our players, I am not currently privy to who we have or whether or not enough funding is being put into it?
As an example, is the structure, shape and creativity that players such as Jock Madden and Javon Andrews play with coached, or is it natural ability?
The rise of our NSW Cup team throughout the season has been based on great attacking shape from players such as Javon and cameos from Jock and Latu etc, but greatly assisted in nearly always having a 13 to be a dominant 1st receiver and carry the ball at speed and being a running threat before distributing crisp passes to our halves.
We have had Charlie Murray, Luke Jack and more recently Mavrik Geyer all play this role well, but none of them have been given an opportunity to play this type of role at NRL level?
Back on topic to Jersey Flegg, it looks like we are developing Blake Van Drie to play this same role which is great. It has not quite clicked from a fluent attacking point of view for our Flegg team in recent weeks, but hopefully it will happen soon.
Back to the assistant coach topic, I know Stephen Isdale was involved with our Jersey Flegg team last season and was extremely vocal which helped our players be focused and not forget their roles which I thought was great.
Not sure if he is still involved this season?
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