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Yep! Kikau two errors, Burton four, Curran two, even Preston had two. That’s ten errors from four of our most experienced players. Hard to overcome that, it was an awful second half.

This is the closest thing to the real answer we’ve got right now I reckon. Galvin needs a full game or two at either 6 or 7 with our full strength team, including a full week of training with that team as preparation. It ain’t a full preseason obviously but Galvin plays quite differently to...

This has to be the answer. Xerri to wing and Montoya dropped. We are a significantly better team with these changes.

Spot on. Galvin has what it takes, at 19 to come into a new team halfway through a season, and not just slot in but actively look to get involved, and have some very nice touches in a key position is extremely promising. Turpin was just desperate to do something to get noticed. He knows he’s...

Amazing isn't it? Excellent analysis! Now take it a bit further (assuming he actually signs): - We get the opportunity to sign a talented but raw 19 year old half in a comp where halves are worth their weight in gold - He wants to play for us and is apparently willing to take less money to do so...

He has been awesome. His defence gets better all the time and his try was massive for us last night. It’s a shame there’s so many elite NSW centres right now otherwise he’d be a really good chance of getting picked. I also love the way he goes about it, never complains or looks for penalties...

Totally. If he was a Bulldog he’d be my favourite player. We need Thompson to give us what Leniu does.

Leniu is a beast but unless he gets his white line fever under control he is going to miss more games than he plays. He’s also making himself everyone’s target and he’ll get sat on his arse eventually.

Repeating myself from another thread, but the guy is 24 years old. Ten years left in his career let’s say.. if he’s this good now how good is he going to be in 5 years time? He has had a relatively quiet start to the year but yesterday was insane, carried us on his back for that 10-15 minutes...

We would have to be the fittest team in the competition now, both physical and mental. To walk in at half time 20 points behind and then to not only tear them apart in the second but also somehow look fresher at full time than we did at half time is really something else. Physical fitness is...

The only thing that needs to be said I reckon. What a second half, he carried us on his back like a true captain should. He is an incredible player. The guy is 24 years old, he easily has another 10 years in him, can you imagine how good he’ll be in say another 5? We need to pay him whatever he...

History says it will.. injuries, other teams figuring us out, etc. But damn it’s good while it lasts. I also like Ciraldo’s attitude on this, he said in the presser that he wants the boys to celebrate each win knowing that they’ll buckle back down and prepare for the next game.

Big test for Ciraldo coming up next week. We have pretty much our best 17 available and Broncos will be looking to knock us off at home and show they are a genuine contender (which they absolutely should be based on their roster). Game plan needs to be bang on, starting with shutting down Walsh...

He’s the best broken play 5/8th in the game, sees a disorganised defence and hits the burners. Has enough pace to get through the line, the only problem today was his hands.

I was thinking about this during the game. If most other teams lose their one or two key players they’re screwed but I can’t see how that would happen to us. Every injury hurts but go through our 17 from today and I can think of the next man up for every position and we’d be on par with today.

100% agree. King played the perfect front rower’s game, his stats are completely mental and he somehow looked as fresh at the end as he did at the start. I would love to see him play for NSW this year even though we’ll miss him massively, he deserves to be recognised as one of the best...

I stand corrected. Mitchell still pushing and grubbing away in the last few minutes as his team is dismantled and he contributes 7 tackles, 2 errors and absolutely nothing in attack.

There is nothing more satisfying in rugby league than seeing the absolute grub Cody Walker on the end of a trashing AND being hooked.

Absolute gun, if God forbid Critta was to go down I would put the (C) next to King’s name any day of the week. 62 minutes, 34 tackles, 4 tackle busts, 2 offloads, 232m run and a try. That is about as good a front rower’s performance as you will see.

Also, just for completeness in this thread: -3 Hynes. Is there a more overpaid and overrated player in the game? I am struggling to remember literally one thing he did last night. -2 Mulitalo. Six errors, his team loses, still manages to flap his gums every chance he gets. Knob. -1 Kennedy. Good...

Because every player deserves points today. 3.0 Preston. Bent the line with every run, silky hands on a few plays. Should be playing Origin this year. 2.8 Xerri. Would have been burning to have a good one tonight and nailed it, love him. 2.6 Sexton. Great kicking game, some good runs, tackles...

I can't figure out how I missed him for all those years before he came to us. I knew who he was of course, was he always this good and just poorly used with no settled position? Was he in superstar teams and couldn't get a proper look in? Or has he genuinely stepped up a level or three with us...

Great way of putting it. Salmon is the cannon fodder. It’s also why DSF only played 20 odd minutes yesterday, Ciraldo did exactly the same thing with Hughes last year. We have a *very* good coach.

It could be a lot lot lot worse. Imagine you wake up as a Dragons fan AND you get Ilias and Flanagan as your halves?

Lots of people criticising the rotations today but I think it was actually pretty good. King coming back on late in particular was excellent, he made a big difference. Mann giving Mahoney a spell at hooker is not a good option, that’s just going to limit Mann’s impact and we need him too much...

Only 27 too. Another five seasons at least in his prime, and we’ve got him for four of those.

Lots of people asking how Salmon starts over Mann but this is the answer. He’s 32, let the kids bash each other for the first 20 minutes and then Mann comes in. Straightens up our attack, links the middle to the edge at just the right time or hits it up himself, and can absolutely pulverise in...

Only Gus knows, but we can dream. If we can stretch the coin we have (including JAC) on two young beast mode props and Paps it feels like the right move and I reckon also solves the halfback issue in a way, Sexton would thrive in that lineup until Woods is ready.

If we can add Thompson and May as our front rowers in rotation with King, Hughes and Tupouniua, and an already elite second row, we are set.

I stand corrected…

That’s what I keep thinking too. Many will be all over the Roosters next week, their season was over last week. Such a missed opportunity for us to have gone into a preliminary final.

Sexton was nowhere near as bad today as some on here are saying. He’s been given a job which is to take some of the kicking off Burton, use his short kicks close to the line, and don’t be a turnstile in defence. I wasn’t at the game but I think he needs to communicate better when he’s planning...

The boys will be in the sheds right now absolutely gutted but if I was in there I’d be telling me they’ve just given us the most inspiring season in many years. They can hold their heads high today, they were back to the team that won 9 of 11 or whatever it was. Crichton and Kikau absolutely...

Maybe. I am just a bit sick of everyone saying every close loss is because of the referees, or there’s some huge conspiracy against us. It’s a cop out. Every other club’s fans think they’re on the end of every bad call too, I bet even Manly are saying they won today despite the referee.

Going to take some time to process that. I never felt safe even when we were up by 10 and had the momentum. You can just never count DCE out, his game management is second to none and when it mattered most he did what he always does. Same with Turbo, plays with one arm dangling and still...

This is what I've been thinking since Saturday. Not sure I believe the whole 'Ciro deliberately tanked a couple of games to throw everyone off' but with three key players coming back, a couple of flogging that still sting, and the fact this team has come from nowhere to finish 6th(!!!) beyond...

Just because a player isn’t playing first grade doesn’t make them a recruitment fail. We need depth for FG and a pathway for younger players to figure their game out. On your list of fails I think Tetevano, Taaffe, Suluka-Fifita and Poasa fall into these categories. Can’t agree on Luai, I...

He’s been the only real recruitment fail I reckon, Gus’s strike rate remains almost perfect for this season at least.

While this is all true.. Ciraldo does deserve some credit for realising his mistake and hooking him at halftime. It’s pretty rare to bench your half at halftime, at least CC recognised what was happening and did something about it.

I think Preston might be our best option at 13. He’s not running great edge lines at the moment, we’d be better of putting him in the middle and starting Hayes on the edge, with Salmon either gone or benched.

Of course we are, he came across in 2022 when we were an awful team, what choice did we have? The decision to play Hutch today was absolutely terrible judgement by Ciraldo but equally Hutch wasn’t the only passenger out there. Sua and Clarke made some of our best players look very ordinary. We...

100% this. You can kind of understand the poor attack tonight with JAC, Burton and Xerri all missing, and the terrible decision to play Hutch instead of Hayward at 6. But none of that explains the defence this week and last. Mann is the difference, absolutely massive loss and probably the...

Good post. Speaking of DCE, he might be intensely hard to like but man he is a good player. He’s 35 and looks like he could keep playing top level for years. 300 odd games over 14 seasons will teach you some stuff I suppose.

What is with his line running at the moment? Pretty much every time he got the ball last night he did that big telegraphed left foot step back into the defensive line that’s coming across in cover and he got shut down. The only time he went the other way he got past DCE and got a great offload...

We’ve had 28% possession. Momentum will shift, it always does. We just need to be good enough and hang on here.

Gotta say, Xerri is not just holding his spot anymore, he is getting up there with our top few players. Bends the line constantly, solid defensively, very few mistakes, regularly burns his opponent with speed, and his judgement on when to pass and when to run is getting better each game...

One of life’s great mysteries. They didn’t know how to use him, played him in the halves, lock and 14 at different times. Also possible that he was just over them and needed the change. Whatever it was we have benefited massively.

3. Mann - great try, 26 tackles, 5 tackle breaks, 138m run. Gets better every week, absolutely crucial to our success this year and his experience will be invaluable in finals. Hits like a truck in defence and so smart with ball in hand. 2. Sexton - beautiful combination with Xerri, great...

That’s just it. He was that good and that influential on the game today. I said in the other thread but worth repeating here that defences KNOW what he’s going to do, study him all week, try and negate him any way they can.. and he STILL does it to them. Very few players are that consistently...

Imagine trying to defend him? You look up and see him on the 30m line ready to come at you, you know he’s either going to steamroll you or make you commit and then palm an offload to his winger. You know all this and STILL he carves you up.

Xerri was fantastic today. Ran for 201m, regularly got on the outside of the defence and showed good judgement. JAC and Tracey weren’t in good positions when Xerri made that break (mainly through good Raiders positioning) so it was smart to hold on. He’s lost some of his pace but he was so...

3. Critta. Far from a perfect game, but three of the most elite plays you will ever see. I remember reading an article many years ago about how SBW carried us on his back to a win against the Broncos, that’s what Critta did today because without him I don’t think we win that. 2. Xerri. His best...

We lost the Cowboys, Raiders and Souths games by a total of 10 points. Throw in Storm and Panthers which we lost by a total of 8 points, that’s five games we’ve lost by a total of three converted tries. We win all of those and we are very likely top of the table right now…

This 1000%. He also whacks in defence, never misses and has great technique. He has excellent judgement with ball in hand, he knows instinctively when it’s time to push into the line or when there’s something brewing and needs to link it all up. Just another brilliant example of our...

Even that Walsh try shouldn’t have happened, Burton had him lined up and did some arm grabbing. Someone posted earlier that they’d take Tracey over Walsh any day and I completely agree, Tracey won’t cut a defence apart or kick a 40/20 like Walsh can but Tracey will also never go missing or try a...

Tracey’s vision is what sets him apart. He has great instincts for when to run, when to pass, when to push the sweep play or just hammer it forward. Even within the sweep play he is ready to do something different, there was a play yesterday where it looked like the classic sweep but he threw a...

I watched yesterday’s game with my old man and said I can’t remember enjoying a season as much as this year because I absolutely know we will be competitive until the end. The players are just demanding it of each other. I was laughing out loud at some points because it’s just so joyful to watch...

Math was never my strength.

That was a game of inches and seconds. Hayward gets a finger or two more firmly on the ball and it’s a try or gets a knee to his head half a second earlier and it’s a penalty try. Burton kicks his two misses slightly straighter and we have four more points. Wilson puts his arm on the attacker...

He should have been their bench hooker with Hunt starting and Grant dropped. Grant is not the player he was a few years ago. Hunt always plays out of his skin for QLD and if they’d had Reed come on with 20 minutes to go he’d have put some starch back in their defence and would have been in Leniu...

Reed living his best life

Played 69 minutes today too, 141m run on top of 56 tackles with none missed. What a machine. Always bends the line and looks to offload but has really good judgement about whether to risk it. Love him.

How good was Xerri’s tackle?? Pretty sure it was his miss that sent them downfield but to keep chasing and execute a perfect try saver was pretty impressive, I thought he was great today.

Yep, Preston will really help to put some starch back in the forwards. Hayward tries hard but he’s too small and his knees hit the deck as soon as he’s tackled so his ball playing is wasted.

Starting to agree with this. Sexton hasn’t been great the last few weeks, he is a rocks and diamonds player and there were too many rocks today. Thankfully Hutchison isn’t available, would love to see Hayward get a chance as he’s not impacting enough as a forward.

Man I’d love Mitch Barnett in blue and white. He was massive today, played 82 minutes, 54 tackles and only 2 missed, 5 tackle breaks, 226m run. He’s the type of big bopper prop we desperately need.

The difference is even though we do let in some tries through poor defensive efforts, we don’t let them affect us mentally. The heads don’t drop like they have in seasons past and the tries don’t keep coming. We just reset and keep going.

Especially Kikau. He doesn’t always nail them but having him thundering downfield must put the fear of God into every winger and fullback and he usually does enough to make sure the rest of the defensive line can put the attacker down quickly.

Absolutely spot on. Last night proves we get the best of both worlds with him at 5/8, hands on the ball multiple times every set so his passing game is there, plus his unbelievable kicking game, plus 135m of runs that always threatened their line. He was really good last night and should never...

When it happened my first thought was Kiraz was having a mare of a game at fullback (in attack) but CC trusted Kiraz and Wilson more in the last 15 minutes or so given how close it was. Tough for Skelton but I kind of get it.

If there’s a positive (need to squint pretty hard to see it) it’s that we didn’t get blown away against a good team with probably our worst performance of the year. Roosters were damn good - Walker destroyed us, JWH and Radley belted us, Tedesco and Smith carved us up, May played 80 minutes...

Complete mystery. Even when Hutchison was finally moved to centre he offered nothing, he is just so slow and no-one runs in support because he never passes. Surely Clarke wouldn’t have been worse and we’d have had Burton at 6 all night. Not sure we‘d have won though, given all our errors and...

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.. Walker is the biggest grub in the game, was nice seeing him get steamrolled by Fifita who then stood over him and screamed at him.

The thing is though, our third man helping stop the offloads is so fit he (whoever he is) is then sprinting back into the line and not breaking our system. There are so many 1% things happening like that at the moment, that’s what Ciraldo means by trusting the system.

Good call. Definitely part of Ciraldo’s defensive system, whenever we have two or three in the tackle the last guy usually is there to wrap up the ball. Parra have a bunch of good offloading forwards and although they got a few away yesterday most of them weren’t to advantage or just dribbled...

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but did anyone else notice in the presser that Critta called Ciraldo “coach” a few times? Not “Ciro”, not “Cam”. Sign of respect even though they’re obviously close personally. So many little signs like that everywhere you look at the moment.

My favourite moment of the game. Didn’t even react to Mann getting marched, just turned around and said to the boys “right then, let’s go”. He is only 23, unbelievable to be as good as he is and still improving. He will lead us to greatness!

He will definitely stay there while JAC is out, and our depth is such that we can roll Wilson straight into the team and watch him have a cracking game today. We have every position covered by multiple guys, it‘s beautiful to see. Watch our recruitment over the next year too, players will...

Nailed it about the Eels, they are so entitled. Every tackle one of them throws their hands up asking for a non-existent penalty and Gutherson and Moses are constantly in the referee’s ear. The best contrast was Critta when Mann was marched. Just copped it sweet, gave a little raised eyebrow...

Yep, all the talk before the season was how hard he’d been training by himself to keep fit and all credit to him, I love him and hope he stays with us for a long time. He’ll keep his spot while JAC is out, will be interesting to see how both he and Wilson go for the next couple of months. Our...

Good points. I really like Xerri and thought he was excellent in his first few games. Again not saying he’s done anything wrong and with JAC out for a while I’d say both he and Wilson will keep their spots which I am totally fine with.

Unbelievable player and even better leader. Coming off a 5 day turnaround after Origin don’t forget, and turns in his best performance for us yet. Never makes mistakes, threatening with every run, absolute brick wall in defence. Never blows up or looks pissed off, just laser focused on the next...

How does Wilson go at centre? If he goes alright, I suspect if he keeps playing like today he isn’t far off replacing Xerri. As much as I love Xerri and can’t point to anything he’s done wrong, he seems to have plateaued a bit in the last month and it might be worth giving him a stint in NSW Cup...

We’ve seen a few games this year where we know we should have won and had opportunities, but didn’t convert because of inexperience, bad decisions, bad luck, etc. Best thing about that win is that again we had opportunities but this time converted enough of them to win. A win like that is the...

Moses and Gutherson are such whiners, Gutherson still giving the ref a gob full after full time. Nothing more satisfying than seeing Moses’ smug face after a loss.

3. Critta - what a player, generational talent and still so young. I hope he wears blue and white for the next decade. 2. Tracey - burned Parra’s left edge multiple times, such a smart footballer. 1. Burton - rediscovered the nightmare bomb and terrorised them with it. Looked dangerous in attack...

Absolutely phenomenal game from Tracey. His combination with Critta was so awesome to watch and he’s deceptively quick, he burned Parra’s left side almost every time we were in their red zone. He has fullback sewn up for as long as he wants it.

Both Voss and Brandy are painful. They were going on as if the Raiders are world beaters and were flogging us by 30.

Yep. Said this in another thread last week, he doesn’t actually need to do any yardage runs when we have Kiraz, Critta, Kiraz and Tracey who do that really well. He needs to stay fresh and ready on his wing for when we need him.

Two steps back tonight after some real steps forward in the last few weeks. Atrocious handling errors, directionless attack, terrible last tackle options, poor goal kicking… you name it, we messed it up. And yet… we lost by 4 to a team coming off the bye and with the wind in their sails...

We’ve scored four tries now, shame two of them were setting up the Raiders.

It felt like last night was the first game in a while where we didn’t really take any risks, we’ve been increasingly willing to play aggressive attack this season but then we hit the Penrith wall last night. No one can match their game plan, they pin you in your half with fast sets and deep...

Damn, how good is that? Total opposite of the last two or three seasons where we might look ok for the first 30 minutes, let ourselves down with a couple of tries before half time and then capitulate in the second half and lose by a thousand.

Good post, agree with everything except the Tracey comment. The way he accelerated into the corner to create space for Kiraz to score is exactly what we’ve been missing for ages, and what the best fullbacks do. Haven't seen enough of him yet but I give him at least a 50/50 chance of developing...

Absolutely. Allowing only two tries against the Panthers is a massive achievement and yes we gave up way too much ball but still managed to get across the stripe twice. That’s about as good a feeling as you can have after a loss.

That was a good game of footy. Penrith are the benchmark, their defence is sensational and even without Cleary they are stacked with attacking options, how good are Edwards and Yeo? Not to mention JFH, his carries are so good and he plays the ball so quickly, Warriors are damn lucky to be...

Had the exact same thought. He figures if he slots into a top team he only has to do enough to stay in FG rather than having to carry the team and bust his arse every game. Even if he has to take a pay cut he’ll still be bringing in a lazy $16k per week, not bad when he’s only 24. It makes me...

It’s gotta be our recruitment right? I doubt Ciraldo has changed anything about his systems or coaching, but we went after experienced players who either come from great teams (Crichton) or who stood out in poor teams (Mann). I can totally see someone like Mann just going about his business at...

Is Skelton spending any time in the forwards in NSW Cup? If he stays on the wing it‘s hard to see him getting picked in FG over Kiraz or JAC or even Tracey for that matter. If he can play second row then he would surely be a better bench player than Morrin?

Great post. There’s just a sense every week that we’re going to be competitive until the end, even when we let in some points early. The fact that after 9 rounds we are sitting in eight position on the ladder with a +25 points differential (comparable to Brisbane and Manly and not far off...