Who is our worst

[twentyforty]

AD just got a contract extension, albeit one year...

Brooks is off contract.
Grant him an early exit and plan for the future.

A future without Brooks.

AD can play centre for the rest of the year - we have only one capable option (Naden - since they wanna make AJ a utility)

1 Staines
2 Tupou
3 Naden
4 AD
5 Starford
6 Will Smith
7 Wakeham

Desperate times.

I don’t know Demps? Seems like shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic. There’s plenty of time to do that mid season.?
I think it’s time to stick with this team and encourage self management. Let the players actually play to their own perception of their strengths.

 

[king_sirro]

Haha Api isn’t without blame either. No one is immune from the piss poor performances they’re all producing. But goddamn, at least the Panthers knew what Api was up to with his craftiness behind the ruck. So many times Kikau or Fisher Harris, or Liam Martin knew what he could do close to the line so they always pushed. Luai and Cleary knew what he could do down the short side, so plays came off the back of it.

Again, he isn’t without blame. But the players certainly don’t have any brains to play off the back of it

I'll certainly agree it has been terrible how no one is pushing forward with Api when he dart out of dummy half. Everyone is just sitting back watching.

 

[TigerNeddyK]

I'll certainly agree it has been terrible how no one is pushing forward with Api when he dart out of dummy half. Everyone is just sitting back watching.

Exactly ,, they don’t back up ,, brooks and Douhei are lazy and just stand back while the man with the ball runs with no support, giving him no options and making it easy for the defence ,, .. again it’s all in the lazy , stupid low iq football that the halves play at this club .. they run sisdeways and do nothing to lift the team and bring all the players strengths into the game .. Hastings had them all running off him and knowing their roles .. the current halves do none of this and the rsuts speak for themselves!

 

[Bus 2 Terrigal]

Haha Api isn’t without blame either. No one is immune from the piss poor performances they’re all producing. But goddamn, at least the Panthers knew what Api was up to with his craftiness behind the ruck. So many times Kikau or Fisher Harris, or Liam Martin knew what he could do close to the line so they always pushed. Luai and Cleary knew what he could do down the short side, so plays came off the back of it.

Again, he isn’t without blame. But the players certainly don’t have any brains to play off the back of it

The Panthers knew what Api was up to. And he was playing under the same coach who oversaw Brooks reaching Dally M halfback of the year status 🤔

 

[king_sirro]

Exactly ,, they don’t back up ,, brooks and Douhei are lazy and just stand back while the man with the ball runs with no support, giving him no options and making it easy for the defence ,, .. again it’s all in the lazy , stupid low iq football that the halves play at this club .. they run sisdeways and do nothing to lift the team and bring all the players strengths into the game .. Hastings had them all running off him and knowing their roles .. the current halves do none of this and the rsuts speak for themselves!

I partly blame the structure. We are playing with no halfback and no ball playing lock. Doueihi and Brooks (Brooks in particular) are too wide. We need our half, whoever it is, on the ball around the ruck. Api controlling the middle on his own then a long shift to Brooks on an edge is the worst coaching I have ever seen.

 

[hobbo1]

Brooks

 

[sparci]

he'd have dylan edwards storming down his side whenever he makes them darts, i remember specifically that game where we were locked up with the panthers so close to the end, and api splits us from dummy half and late passes to dylan edwards who scores and wins them the game, laurie tries very hard but just doesnt have the positional play nor speed, i really hope staines gets put in there this week

 

[Sataris]

Don't understand how a halfback who can't/won't create overlaps even when the opposition is down to 12 had a 'good' game.

Can someone explain it to me? Brooks got ~$50,000 for that performance (if the $1.1m is 'real')

 

[watersider]

People are a little scattershot in their criticism and blaming everyone. The backline is terrible, so have a go at them, but the forwards and our new recruits are doing well.

Api was a little messy in his play but he did a lot of good around the ruck, making darting runs and in defense in cleaning up a fair bit and I thought he was good. You can see he needs to work on cohesion with the rest of the team, but in a beaten and bad side, you surely have to be a bit more generous in assessments of his play.

Our forwards, including Klemmer and Papalii, have looked dominant in both games. This is different from last year. That's not a big claim as the Titans and Knights are not great teams, but they at least did their job and look an improved pack. Stefano looks a bit lost, his second spell is usually better than his first but he's not having impact and he is error prone. Apart from him the forwards have been good.

I'll just qualify that praise by saying that at times the Knights managed to get their ruck speed going very quick, and that is a concern for our forwards, but the Knights weren't really able to maintain that momentum and overall I thought we created the field position and caused errors through defensive pressure. And I thought our pack was better than theirs. And we've done that two weeks in a row. The test of the forwards will be when we come up against a better side, a team that can build pressure, because we haven't come up against a good team yet. But Klemmer, Papalii and Twal are great dominant tacklers that have mostly been controlling opposition well. Whether they do that consistently will be interesting to see.

 

[earl]

Don't understand how a halfback who can't/won't create overlaps even when the opposition is down to 12 had a 'good' game.

Easy. I posted previously how he kicked a 40/20, created a really good opportunity to score, made his tackles, put in good 5th tackle options and made basically no unforced errors.

For the 5th tackle options someone wrote down on this forum all our 5th tackle plays. I just took out the ones Brooks did and they were all basically good. I suggest someone goes and looks at that post and compare Brooks efforts to Api's and AD's.

I'm not even sure that he didn't create an overlap because that opportunity I think they outnumbered them at that point.

Brooks got ~$50,000 for that performance (if the $1.1m is 'real')

He is massively overpaid. For that salary I'd expect us to have a marquee player. Brooks is an average NRL half and the halves in the NRL aren't very good.

I also don't consider him a halfback and he hasn't been played that way by the club since at least all of last season onwards.

 

[tiger_one]

I sat right near the in goal area at Leichhardt in rd 1 and it’s very clear after we concede a try that everyone is happy to wait for someone else to stand up and make a play. In the best footy side’s everyone is chatting and everyone wants to be the difference maker. Sadly nothings changed this year.

This really needs to be fixed.
Is there any way this observation can be conveyed to the coaches so that they can give their reply why this happened and assurances that it will be fixed?