Pre-season

I didn’t criticise his kicking. What I did say was that he kicked exactly 100 times in 2020, which when you consider he provided virtually nothing else all season, equates to around $10,000 per kick.

In fact, the only thing I did criticise by way of highlighting, was that he provided virtually nothing else. So it would appear, on that at least, we might agree.

Only after you asked for some perspective did I go on to actually critique his kicking - which, despite what you’ve put forward, I still believe is a more than fair criticism.

And sure, I would agree that Milford is a better kicker now than 2015. He can also have games where he kicks very well. But if you step back and judge him against his peers he is simply far, far too inconsistent and is absolutely light years behind Cleary, Reynolds, DCE and even Pearce.

I recall there was at least a couple of games this season we could have won had we simply kicked to the corners and controlled the speed of play, time in play and field position. But Milford, with his sub-par tactical kicking, put up mid-field bomb after mid-field bomb. It honestly infuriated me at the time. I could certainly be wrong, but I feel the Cronulla game might have been one of them.

All that aside, and referring to your other post; I do find it strange that the go-to move of far too many on here when someone criticises a favourite player of theirs is to whip out the a-word: agenda.

Why must someone have an agenda simply because they criticise a player. It makes me wonder; is it an agenda to expect more of the highest paid, most experienced and positionally critical players whilst cutting the rookies some slack? If so, then I (like it might be fair to say you do with Boyd (as do I)), most certainly have an agenda with Milford.

Even if I don’t agree with it, I truly appreciate your contribution to this forum, but did think you were above trotting out the agenda dribble.

Sorry for the late reply. Been a bit unwell, and still a bit antsy.

I take on board what you say, and I also value & appreciate your well thought out, intelligent and well argued contributions, except this time, for your rather disingenuous comments above on agendas, mine in particular, mainly because IMO you have one, but fail to acknowledge it that I can see, yet criticise me for mine.

You criticise Milford (yet again), and for mine, unnecessarily so (it's been done to death). The plethora of criticisms of Milford are mostly on point and I agree and respect them, but here, I do not respect or appreciate what I see as your patronizing, self righteous indignation in your criticism of me, about my agenda when you ignore yours.

Consistently throughout your posts on Milford, you, like everyone else on here with the same caustic agenda against Milford, perpetuate the Milford the Maccas Man, the burger king (sorry about the franchise fracture), the poke-the-pudge trope, which IS for mine both trope and agenda. This buries any positives he has under a fusillade of french fried flippancy, focused on and always on, his negatives. To me, and I stress that, to me, that is an agenda. Now I don't have a problem with agendas. I have hundreds, but I (hope) I don't hide behind mine, under some veneer of virtue that attaches to being allegedly agenda free as I see you doing.

Further proof, again for me, of your tropic agenda against Milford is that, after a relative lull in the Milford belly-god, babblative trope, as soon as I post something positive about Milford, you immediately leap out from a bush behind the golden arches and post yet more negatives. That is my point here. Milf just can't take a trick.

It seems you just can't help yourself. It's like, how dare anyone say something positive about the belly-cheer burger king. You even descend to parody him further by reducing his game to what is for me, a facile kick-per-dollar assessment. So mate, if that is not evidence of an agenda, I don't know what is. And the fat, sorry, fact, that you patronise me with your virtuous "I expected better from you" comment is just a little bit too much special sauce. Virtue needs no additives, unless it's needed to make its posturing palatable.

I am a great one for context, yet another of my agendas. Your post in reply to mine, was as I see it, underpinned by, and repeated the Milf-the-fat Maccas Man trope. My posts were a simple response to @winslow_wong's about the Broncos going to kicking college. I simply wanted to highlight that for all his considerable flaws and failures, Milford at least tried his best to lift his game - that part of his game, kicking, which is so important for an effective primary kicker. So he also went to the Lions, yes, back in 2018, but the same kicking college as the one reported above, and, on his days off, to lift his game which of course doesn't fit the Milf-is-a-fat-lazy-turd narrative, the nasty little trope infecting these threads.

Unfortunately, tropes alter the way people see the world. A trope may start out as a convenient tool for a lazy writer, but it soon becomes a form of propaganda. I for one don't want to see Milford and our perceptions of him, buried in propaganda - in burgers of blather. I don't want to see him degraded and diminished to the extent that all he becomes is a caricature of a very special player who has clearly faltered, yet may well, under Walters, regain his best form largely eroded by Seibold. The same applies to almost everyone in the Broncos of 2020. We need Milford at his very best. I am just trying to remind us that his very best is very good indeed and to not lose sight of that fact.

Peace be with you mate. Like I said, I'm a bit unwell, a bit antsy, and no malice intended.
 
Sorry for the late reply. Been a bit unwell, and still a bit antsy.

I take on board what you say, and I also value & appreciate your well thought out, intelligent and well argued contributions, except this time, for your rather disingenuous comments above on agendas, mine in particular, mainly because IMO you have one, but fail to acknowledge it that I can see, yet criticise me for mine.

You criticise Milford (yet again), and for mine, unnecessarily so (it's been done to death). The plethora of criticisms of Milford are mostly on point and I agree and respect them, but here, I do not respect or appreciate what I see as your patronizing, self righteous indignation in your criticism of me, about my agenda when you ignore yours.

Consistently throughout your posts on Milford, you, like everyone else on here with the same caustic agenda against Milford, perpetuate the Milford the Maccas Man, the burger king (sorry about the franchise fracture), the poke-the-pudge trope, which IS for mine both trope and agenda. This buries any positives he has under a fusillade of french fried flippancy, focused on and always on, his negatives. To me, and I stress that, to me, that is an agenda. Now I don't have a problem with agendas. I have hundreds, but I (hope) I don't hide behind mine, under some veneer of virtue that attaches to being allegedly agenda free as I see you doing.

Further proof, again for me, of your tropic agenda against Milford is that, after a relative lull in the Milford belly-god, babblative trope, as soon as I post something positive about Milford, you immediately leap out from a bush behind the golden arches and post yet more negatives. That is my point here. Milf just can't take a trick.

It seems you just can't help yourself. It's like, how dare anyone say something positive about the belly-cheer burger king. You even descend to parody him further by reducing his game to what is for me, a facile kick-per-dollar assessment. So mate, if that is not evidence of an agenda, I don't know what is. And the fat, sorry, fact, that you patronise me with your virtuous "I expected better from you" comment is just a little bit too much special sauce. Virtue needs no additives, unless it's needed to make its posturing palatable.

I am a great one for context, yet another of my agendas. Your post in reply to mine, was as I see it, underpinned by, and repeated the Milf-the-fat Maccas Man trope. My posts were a simple response to @winslow_wong's about the Broncos going to kicking college. I simply wanted to highlight that for all his considerable flaws and failures, Milford at least tried his best to lift his game - that part of his game, kicking, which is so important for an effective primary kicker. So he also went to the Lions, yes, back in 2018, but the same kicking college as the one reported above, and, on his days off, to lift his game which of course doesn't fit the Milf-is-a-fat-lazy-turd narrative, the nasty little trope infecting these threads.

Unfortunately, tropes alter the way people see the world. A trope may start out as a convenient tool for a lazy writer, but it soon becomes a form of propaganda. I for one don't want to see Milford and our perceptions of him, buried in propaganda - in burgers of blather. I don't want to see him degraded and diminished to the extent that all he becomes is a caricature of a very special player who has clearly faltered, yet may well, under Walters, regain his best form largely eroded by Seibold. The same applies to almost everyone in the Broncos of 2020. We need Milford at his very best. I am just trying to remind us that his very best is very good indeed and to not lose sight of that fact.

Peace be with you mate. Like I said, I'm a bit unwell, a bit antsy, and no malice intended.
No need for your last paragraph - I’m not one to sit on an Internet forum and get upset because someone writes some unflattering words about me 👍

And I certainly appreciate you taking the time to respond and the length you went to, but I see no benefit to be gained by you, me or anyone else bothering to read this back-and-forth in me attempting to respond to each point.

Please don’t take that as patronising or condescending either, it is not in any way supposed to be. Nor is it meant to imply that I couldn’t care to do so.

Reality is though, I am unable to control how you perceive me and the posts that I make. Some you might agree with, others I am certain you won’t.

I learnt some time ago that people will base their perception of others on what they see and the filter they apply to it. We all do it. So whilst I may not necessarily agree with what you observe about me, there are no words I can type that will change your mind.

One thing I will say though is that I thought I had qualified that I do have an agenda against both Milford and Boyd, based solely around my high expectations of them. I also don’t believe, hand on heart, that I was condescending or that I necessarily criticised you for seemingly having an agenda against Boyd, rather I observed the similarities in my posts about Milford as yours about Boyd.

Perhaps where I went wrong was to assume that you, like others on here, were trying to discredit others comments by implying they have an agenda and using it as an easy-out. Almost as a trump-card (not to be mistaken with the orange variety) if you will. However, your response here demonstrates that you’ve considered what you said and why you said it.

But as is always the case, I am on my phone, so typing long posts is annoying and trying to refer to long posts / posts on previous pages even more so. So maybe I’ve got it all wrong, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

That said; agenda or not, and my perceived ability / inability to accept praise for Milford aside, I honestly just cannot agree that his kicking in 2020, as a whole, was anything better than average.

To be clear, I am not arguing with you. Nor am I trying to make you agree with me. But to provide you the same courtesy you did me, and as I said in my follow up post to my own post (because only the greatest posters of all time quote themselves!!), if Milford demonstrated a strong, solid kicking game in 2020, we wouldn’t have to search for and cherry-pick the performances where this occurred. Rather, we would be able to very easily find the instances where it wasn't the case. Unfortunately, I just don’t believe that is the case.

For someone who wasn’t going to write a long post, I failed miserably.
 
No need for your last paragraph - I’m not one to sit on an Internet forum and get upset because someone writes some unflattering words about me 👍

And I certainly appreciate you taking the time to respond and the length you went to, but I see no benefit to be gained by you, me or anyone else bothering to read this back-and-forth in me attempting to respond to each point.

Please don’t take that as patronising or condescending either, it is not in any way supposed to be. Nor is it meant to imply that I couldn’t care to do so.

Reality is though, I am unable to control how you perceive me and the posts that I make. Some you might agree with, others I am certain you won’t.

I learnt some time ago that people will base their perception of others on what they see and the filter they apply to it. We all do it. So whilst I may not necessarily agree with what you observe about me, there are no words I can type that will change your mind.

One thing I will say though is that I thought I had qualified that I do have an agenda against both Milford and Boyd, based solely around my high expectations of them. I also don’t believe, hand on heart, that I was condescending or that I necessarily criticised you for seemingly having an agenda against Boyd, rather I observed the similarities in my posts about Milford as yours about Boyd.

Perhaps where I went wrong was to assume that you, like others on here, were trying to discredit others comments by implying they have an agenda and using it as an easy-out. Almost as a trump-card (not to be mistaken with the orange variety) if you will. However, your response here demonstrates that you’ve considered what you said and why you said it.

But as is always the case, I am on my phone, so typing long posts is annoying and trying to refer to long posts / posts on previous pages even more so. So maybe I’ve got it all wrong, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

That said; agenda or not, and my perceived ability / inability to accept praise for Milford aside, I honestly just cannot agree that his kicking in 2020, as a whole, was anything better than average.

To be clear, I am not arguing with you. Nor am I trying to make you agree with me. But to provide you the same courtesy you did me, and as I said in my follow up post to my own post (because only the greatest posters of all time quote themselves!!), if Milford demonstrated a strong, solid kicking game in 2020, we wouldn’t have to search for and cherry-pick the performances where this occurred. Rather, we would be able to very easily find the instances where it wasn't the case. Unfortunately, I just don’t believe that is the case.

For someone who wasn’t going to write a long post, I failed miserably.
To be fair to both of you and to Milf, it might be a bit tough to use 2020 as an assessment of anything. Milf and indeed the entire team shit the bed, and it seemed relatively clear to me that everyone was down on confidence and very few had faith in the coaching team. That added into the fact that for a fair percentage of the season, Milf was carrying a leg injury makes it hard to mark him on his kicking this year.

He needs to have a bumper 2021 or it is very likely he will be gone and even if he stays it is likely there will be a reduction in his contract.
 
To be fair to both of you and to Milf, it might be a bit tough to use 2020 as an assessment of anything. Milf and indeed the entire team shit the bed, and it seemed relatively clear to me that everyone was down on confidence and very few had faith in the coaching team. That added into the fact that for a fair percentage of the season, Milf was carrying a leg injury makes it hard to mark him on his kicking this year.

He needs to have a bumper 2021 or it is very likely he will be gone and even if he stays it is likely there will be a reduction in his contract.
That's the thing about Milford though. You want to earn the million dollar contracts, you want to be the marquee man, you want to tell Darren Lockyer you don't need his help (in the one thing he is apparently qualified for and actually good at), then you damn well better deliver, and not just when the conditions are 'just so', but deliver week in, week out, like the other million dollar or marquee guys out there.

There is a saying in football and they use it a lot with Leo Messi: "sure, but could he do it on a cold Tuesday night away against Stoke?"

In short, they're asking if he could still be the same player when the conditions don't favour him and he's got his back up against the wall and his team is under the pump. The answer in Milford's case is a fairly emphatic 'no'.

For mine, Milford is the epitome of a flat track bully. He's great at playing off the front foot when his Forwards are rolling over the advantage line and Corey Oates remembers how to catch and TPJ is throwing him offloads etc. He's as good as anyone at serving it up to a hapless Titans, or Knights, or Warriors when they're just not in the contest. Some might actually say he's one of the very best at that on his day.

When it's a Melbourne, or a Roosters, and they need to be chipped away at methodically, and you have to stay constantly 'on' so that you can sniff out any of the small opportunities to pounce, Milford just isn't your guy, at least not consistently. Those are the sort of games where he's behind dozens of other players in terms of who you'd rather have steering the ship.

My argument is then, for the money, surely we could buy one of those dozens of players we'd rather have for those big moments and big games, because that's what wins Premierships, and outside of a golden period in 2015 where the rest of his side was playing out of it's skin, Milford just hasn't, even at his best, looked like one of those guys with ice in his veins who you just know you can turn to to get the job done.

He's not terrible, or the worst player out there, and on his day in absolutely ideal conditions where everything goes in his favour, he can be brilliant, but he's woefully poor value for money when it comes to consistently winning games and Premierships, and for the money, I sincerely believe the Broncos can do better.
 
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That's the thing about Milford though. You want to earn the million dollar contracts, you want to be the marquee man, you want to tell Darren Lockyer you don't need his help (in the one thing he is apparently qualified for and actually good at), then you damn well better deliver, and not just when the conditions are 'just so', but deliver week in, week out, like the other million dollar or marquee guys out there.

There is a saying in football and they use it a lot with Leo Messi: "sure, but could he do it on a cold Tuesday night away against Stoke?"

In short, they're asking if he could still be the same player when the conditions don't favour him and he's got his back up against the wall and his team is under the pump. The answer in Milford's case is a fairly emphatic 'no'.

For mine, Milford is the epitome of a flat track bully. He's great at playing off the front foot when his Forwards are rolling over the advantage line and Corey Oates remembers how to catch and TPJ is throwing him offloads etc. He's as good as anyone at serving it up to a hapless Titans, or Knights, or Warriors when they're just not in the contest. Some might actually say he's one of the very best at that on his day.

When it's a Melbourne, or a Roosters, and they need to be chipped away at methodically, and you have to stay constantly 'on' so that you can sniff out any of the small opportunities to pounce, Milford just isn't your guy, at least not consistently. Those are the sort of games where he's behind dozens of other players in terms of who you'd rather have steering the ship.

My argument is then, for the money, surely we could buy one of those dozens of players we'd rather have for those big moments and big games, because that's what wins Premierships, and outside of a golden period in 2015 where the rest of his side was playing out of it's skin, Milford just hasn't, even at his best, looked like one of those guys with ice in his veins who you just know you can turn to to get the job done.

He's not terrible, or the worst player out there, and on his day in absolutely ideal conditions where everything goes in his favour, he can be brilliant, but he's woefully poor value for money when it comes to consistently winning games and Premierships, and for the money, I sincerely believe the Broncos can do better.
Well considered, fair assessment I think.

One thing I will add. Everyone knows 2015 he was looking unbeatable, we were all waxing lyrical about him, even if we weren’t doing so on this forum.

But I must admit, I remember watching the 2016 world club challenge (or whatever it was called), Hunt was out and it was Kodi and Milford. Milford controlled that game as the primary game manager. Steering the ship, kicking exceptionally and playing the conditions, those rank English conditions, perfectly.

At that time, I thought to myself, ‘this bloke has got better in the off-season, if he keeps this up, a few years from now he will be head and shoulders above anyone else in the comp’. The 2016 season started, and it looked like that was going to be the case.

But since around mid 2016, gradually he has declined, culminating in two very poor seasons in very poor teams.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, I must concede that I have been incredibly critical of Milford. Taking every opportunity to sink the boot in. Not only is this because I expect more from him than anyone else based on his salary and him being ‘the man’ in the team. But also because I do believe, or at least at one stage believed, that he was capable of it.

But for whatever reason (and yes Seibold is a big part of it, but it started well before he turned up and then subsequently left), Milford has been going backwards. When he seemingly had the NRL by the scruff of the neck, ready to take it over and be the next ‘big thing’, he just hasn’t kicked on.

Indeed, sadly, he’s gone backwards.
 
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Well considered, fair assessment I think.

One thing I will add. Everyone knows 2015 he was looking unbeatable, we were all waxing lyrical about him, even if we weren’t doing so on this forum.

But I must admit, I remember watching the 2016 world club challenge (or whatever it was called), Hunt was out and it was Kodi and Milford. Milford controlled that game as the primary game manager. Steering the ship, kicking exceptionally and playing the conditions, those rank English conditions, perfectly.

At that time, I thought to myself, ‘this bloke has got better in the off-season, if he keeps this up, a few years from now he will be head and shoulders above anyone else in the comp’. The 2016 season started, and it looked like that was going to be the case.

But since around mid 2016, gradually he has declined, culminating in two very poor seasons in very poor teams.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, I must concede that I have been incredibly critical of Milford. Taking every opportunity to sink the boot in. Not only is this because I expect more from him than anyone else based on his salary and him being ‘the man’ in the team. But also because I do believe, or at least at one stage believed, that he was capable of it.

But for whatever reason (and yes Seibold is a big part of it, but it started well before he turned up and then subsequently left), Milford has been going backwards. When he seemingly had the NRL by the scruff of the neck, ready to take it over and be the next ‘big thing’, he just hasn’t kicked on.

Indeed, sadly, he’s gone backwards.
There absolutely IS a great player in there somewhere, but we haven't seen it for a very, very long time.

Plenty of guys have greatness inside them. To play NRL at all you have to be pretty elite compared to the rest of the population. But once you're surrounded by gun talent it often it takes sheer willpower and commitment to get above the pack. For a handful, like Milford, absolute talent alone means you can get there occasionally, but without the other two things you'll almost never see a player get there consistently.

Sadly, for Milford, it seems increasingly likely he doesn't possess enough of the other two things to make use of the incredible God-given talent he clearly does possess, and for that reason I think he'll probably never be a really great player, even if on talent alone he could at least manage to be a good player again at some point.
 
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Milford and Minster have always been compared and as mentioned previously, Milford always had more talent but look at the results.

One is a premiership, origin and national champion player, the other is a decent but not great player who has achieved absolutely nothing.
 
1607052194893


Nice of Sammy Thaiday to come along for pre-season training
 
Saw people saying Ben Nakubuwai?

I had to look up that name ... never heard of him.

24 year old prop from Salford, although it doesn't look like he played anywhere in 2020. came through the Storm's NYC team for 2 years. played 2 matches for the Titans in 2017; played 38 matches for Salford over 2018-19, mostly as a bench Prop. played 5 matches for Fiji

first name Petero 🤔
 
I had to look up that name ... never heard of him.

24 year old prop from Salford, although it doesn't look like he played anywhere in 2020. came through the Storm's NYC team for 2 years. played 2 matches for the Titans in 2017; played 38 matches for Salford over 2018-19, mostly as a bench Prop. played 5 matches for Fiji

first name Petero 🤔
Yeah, I do remember him from 2017, but obviously 2 matches 3.5 years ago doesn't really allow me to give much of an insight. Was only really used after injuries for us and he wasn't bad, but nothing memorable either. Would've thought there's better train and trial worthy players out there.
 
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Yeah, I do remember him from 2017, but obviously 2 matches 3.5 years ago doesn't really allow me to give much of an insight. Was only really used after injuries for us and he wasn't bad, but nothing memorable either. Would've thought there's better train and trial worthy players out there.

he spent 2 years at Salford, so he may be decent, i don't watch too much ESL these days to know what he's like
 
he spent 2 years at Salford, so he may be decent, i don't watch too much ESL these days to know what he's like
Was the nothing in 2020 that didn't look appealing. Edit: Nevermind he was in the Canterbury Cup. 1 game.
 
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Sorry for the late reply. Been a bit unwell, and still a bit antsy.

I take on board what you say, and I also value & appreciate your well thought out, intelligent and well argued contributions, except this time, for your rather disingenuous comments above on agendas, mine in particular, mainly because IMO you have one, but fail to acknowledge it that I can see, yet criticise me for mine.

You criticise Milford (yet again), and for mine, unnecessarily so (it's been done to death). The plethora of criticisms of Milford are mostly on point and I agree and respect them, but here, I do not respect or appreciate what I see as your patronizing, self righteous indignation in your criticism of me, about my agenda when you ignore yours.

Consistently throughout your posts on Milford, you, like everyone else on here with the same caustic agenda against Milford, perpetuate the Milford the Maccas Man, the burger king (sorry about the franchise fracture), the poke-the-pudge trope, which IS for mine both trope and agenda. This buries any positives he has under a fusillade of french fried flippancy, focused on and always on, his negatives. To me, and I stress that, to me, that is an agenda. Now I don't have a problem with agendas. I have hundreds, but I (hope) I don't hide behind mine, under some veneer of virtue that attaches to being allegedly agenda free as I see you doing.

Further proof, again for me, of your tropic agenda against Milford is that, after a relative lull in the Milford belly-god, babblative trope, as soon as I post something positive about Milford, you immediately leap out from a bush behind the golden arches and post yet more negatives. That is my point here. Milf just can't take a trick.

It seems you just can't help yourself. It's like, how dare anyone say something positive about the belly-cheer burger king. You even descend to parody him further by reducing his game to what is for me, a facile kick-per-dollar assessment. So mate, if that is not evidence of an agenda, I don't know what is. And the fat, sorry, fact, that you patronise me with your virtuous "I expected better from you" comment is just a little bit too much special sauce. Virtue needs no additives, unless it's needed to make its posturing palatable.

I am a great one for context, yet another of my agendas. Your post in reply to mine, was as I see it, underpinned by, and repeated the Milf-the-fat Maccas Man trope. My posts were a simple response to @winslow_wong's about the Broncos going to kicking college. I simply wanted to highlight that for all his considerable flaws and failures, Milford at least tried his best to lift his game - that part of his game, kicking, which is so important for an effective primary kicker. So he also went to the Lions, yes, back in 2018, but the same kicking college as the one reported above, and, on his days off, to lift his game which of course doesn't fit the Milf-is-a-fat-lazy-turd narrative, the nasty little trope infecting these threads.

Unfortunately, tropes alter the way people see the world. A trope may start out as a convenient tool for a lazy writer, but it soon becomes a form of propaganda. I for one don't want to see Milford and our perceptions of him, buried in propaganda - in burgers of blather. I don't want to see him degraded and diminished to the extent that all he becomes is a caricature of a very special player who has clearly faltered, yet may well, under Walters, regain his best form largely eroded by Seibold. The same applies to almost everyone in the Broncos of 2020. We need Milford at his very best. I am just trying to remind us that his very best is very good indeed and to not lose sight of that fact.

Peace be with you mate. Like I said, I'm a bit unwell, a bit antsy, and no malice intended.
Mate go have a lie down, that emailed taxed me and I am not unwell and didn't right it
 

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