POST GAME 2023 NRL Grand Final - Penrith vs Brisbane

[Sproj]

I agree with Tallis, not because I think Reynolds isn't playing well or worth re-signing but things change pretty quickly at 33. At the same age and premiers Alf just pulled the pin in April 99.

Who would have thought in September 98 that was on the cards?

I'd be letting Reynolds have a break, assure him he's wanted and needed but let's talk in April when you've done a pre-season and come back for a few rounds.

Got to be honest and transparent with him, but it's no good for anyone if he signs on for 25 and then in April wants out.

If it gets to April and he says I will wind up at the end of this year, you've saved yourself some heartache.

Or he says I feel great, I want another year, you can make an informed choice.

The only thing I will say to this though is that there just aren’t many good 7s around anymore and their value has never been higher. You need a conductor and legit 7s are few and far between. Aside from Cleary, all the other decent 7s are either the same age as Reynolds or older.

 

[Lockysillegitimatechild]

This reynolds not resigning bullshit is crazy. He took us to a fucking grand final!!!!! Souths didnt make the top 8! Its half him, half walters (with DD the behind the scenes architect). Ffs do people forget where we were without an organisinv halfback? Ill take prelims and top 8 even, and thats what he will keep us at. Its our attitudes that will determine the next few years and reynolds history of getting souths to the top 4 will mean he doesn't have to be the man, he just needs to guide us through the season...

One change I hope we do make though is to make carrigan co-captain. Reynolds looked stressed in the gf. Carrigan thrives under pressure. Let carrigan do the media stuff and reynolds be the on field captain. Will take a shit load of pressure off of him. Walters could certainly shape it as a future planning model too. I'd be putting carrigan to prop too actually, keep his game near identical and put weight on capewell and put him in the middle. He's an attitude driver so still critical to the team but capewells defence is too hit and miss in big games. Piakura to an edge makes our bench bigger too. 20 mins capewell, 40 mins mins hethrington, 20 mins capewell. Means we have 2 big boppers on the field all the time. 2 of Willison, baker, tapau or jensen could come on with high energy 20 mins for carrigan/haas.

We need to make tweaks to our team. After reflection I really feel a dynasty coming on. Crazy I know but these kids are frothing for it. We will dominate the comp next year, 2015 is a recent reminder that will help us.

Also, if mam resigns we need to let him take up more responsibility.

 

[ningnangnong]

The re-signing of Reynolds and his performance in the grand final are two entirely separate things in my book.

He wasn't great in the grand final, yes okay. But, without Reynolds joining the club, we don't have the season we've just had and we don't make the grand final - we wouldn't even have come close without him. It's not just his on-field performances over the course of the season, but his off-field influence as well. It has been integral in shaping the mindset of this very young and relatively inexperienced squad.

As for re-signing him, I agree with 1 1910. He's at that age where it's best for both parties to sit back and take a bit of time to make a decision on if he extends his contract/how long for, and so forth. His performance in the grand final is a non-issue when it comes to extending his contract.

We also need to (well I hope we already have) start planning for post-Reynolds. I don't want to see us try and force Mam into a halfback role, I like the freedom he has now. Likewise, we can't forego a decent number seven just because we have Walsh at fullback (like we did in the Lockyer days). Walshy can't control a game like Locky could, well not yet anyway. He's far too gung-ho at the moment, and his kicking game needs a lot of work, though there is huge potential there.

I don't Madden is going to reach the level we require either.

 

[Skathen]

I don't Madden is going to reach the level we require either.

Not in the same ballpark.

There's no half on the market right now that's going to offer more than ARey does at least for a few years. We need to prioritise signing both Ezra and Reece - but they need a seasoned head to lead them around as both are prone to absolute brain explosions - which is normal for such young spine players.

 

[Mr Fourex]

ARey....1 season at a time.

I can't see him going anywhere else......

 

[the_next]

Still hard to fathom how we lost that.
24-8, play smart footy and we win.
Ffs.

 

[Bronx48]

Not that it matters anymore but my wife sent me this from her FB feed:

“It was absolutely devastating and there were tears at fulltime last night, but I do want to point out one significant fact about the last 5-10 minutes of last night's Grand Final. Gale force winds picked up in that time and made it impossible for the Broncos to get the ball out of their end with those goal line drop-outs. If Reynolds had tried to kick long balls (which would have been the ideal play for the Broncos), the ball would have ended up in the grandstand to the left of where he was kicking. Even the short balls were ending up on the left sideline. Without that gale force wind picking up toward the end of the game, the Broncos would have won the Grand Final last night! THAT'S MY TEAM! ”.

Can someone who attended the game confirm this?

I thought a cyclone was going to occur It was heaps strong and ofcourse it had to happen in the last 10 mins, I was thinking are you kidding me!!

 

[Eli Suave]

This one hurt deeply. Being at the game and seeing us lose it in real time was brutal.

 

[JayPee]

I honestly don't get the constant whinging on the drop outs in the 2nd half from people. Heard it all day on radio. You gain maybe 20m extra kicking it as far as you can or you can possibly get the ball back by going for what reynolds was. It's a no brainer. One of them comes off it knocks off even more time for Penrith to come back in. And it was from the "back in my day people". Dinosaurs.

 

[Galah]

Herbie doing that offload on tackle 2 just keeps hitting me in the face every hour. We complete that set and we win.

I know there’s millions of things you can pin point but that’s the one for me.

What in the actual **** was he thinking.

 

[Johnny92]

Herbie doing that offload on tackle 2 just keeps hitting me in the face every hour. We complete that set and we win.

I know there’s millions of things you can pin point but that’s the one for me.

What in the actual **** was he thinking.

I think we score again that set if Herbie either holds the ball or Keenan times his run abit better and catches it.
We were running all over them at that point and from that point on it's like we hardly touched the ball and if we did it was coming off our own line running into a Gail force wind.

 

[Galah]

I think we score again that set if Herbie either holds the ball or Keenan times his run abit better and catches it.
We were running all over them at that point and from that point on it's like we hardly touched the ball and if we did it was coming off our own line running into a Gail force wind.

I don’t know if Adam gave instruction or not, maybe he did, but thats where he needed to tell them just tuck the ball run hard and straight and get it to me on the 5th.

Man I’m not going to get over this loss. It’s not the loss, it’s the how they lost and how I believe it will effect them going forward.

The panthers lost their frost gf but they stormed home and nearly won, they took that going forward we did the complete opposite.

 

[FACTHUNT]

Let's have a BHQ pact to all get into our routine (whatever it is that usually makes us feel good) tomorrow and report back with how we're going.

Well I didn't do any better today. Went to bed more tired than a phenergan sedated Snorlax but woke up at 1am running through all the 'whatifs' for at least 2 hours. Inescapable. Now I am crook.

Didn't gym. Didn't eat well. Bludged at work (from home).

I hope you all did better than me today - I am motivated for tomorrow!

 

[_wwong]

This reynolds not resigning bullshit is crazy. He took us to a fucking grand final!!!!! Souths didnt make the top 8! Its half him, half walters (with DD the behind the scenes architect). Ffs do people forget where we were without an organisinv halfback? Ill take prelims and top 8 even, and thats what he will keep us at. Its our attitudes that will determine the next few years and reynolds history of getting souths to the top 4 will mean he doesn't have to be the man, he just needs to guide us through the season...

One change I hope we do make though is to make carrigan co-captain. Reynolds looked stressed in the gf. Carrigan thrives under pressure. Let carrigan do the media stuff and reynolds be the on field captain. Will take a shit load of pressure off of him. Walters could certainly shape it as a future planning model too. I'd be putting carrigan to prop too actually, keep his game near identical and put weight on capewell and put him in the middle. He's an attitude driver so still critical to the team but capewells defence is too hit and miss in big games. Piakura to an edge makes our bench bigger too. 20 mins capewell, 40 mins mins hethrington, 20 mins capewell. Means we have 2 big boppers on the field all the time. 2 of Willison, baker, tapau or jensen could come on with high energy 20 mins for carrigan/haas.

We need to make tweaks to our team. After reflection I really feel a dynasty coming on. Crazy I know but these kids are frothing for it. We will dominate the comp next year, 2015 is a recent reminder that will help us.

Also, if mam resigns we need to let him take up more responsibility.

it was only 3 weeks ago where he played a huge part in beating the storm. All his kicks in that game paid off and the commentators couldn’t stop frothing at his form.

 

[_wwong]

Well I didn't do any better today. Went to bed more tired than a phenergan sedated Snorlax but woke up at 1am running through all the 'whatifs' for at least 2 hours. Inescapable. Now I am crook.

Didn't gym. Didn't eat well. Bludged at work (from home).

I hope you all did better than me today - I am motivated for tomorrow!

I felt pretty flat last night around 8pm, Knowing that only 24 hrs prior, I was on such a bloody high watching Ezra go over for his third.

I don’t know how the players from both teams handle this week when Sunday was so emotionally charged. There has to be some type of therapy done for them, because if us normal folk struggle from just spectating then the players must feel it 10 fold.

 

[tommy]

I felt pretty flat last night around 8pm, Knowing that only 24 hrs prior, I was on such a bloody high watching Ezra go over for his third.

I don’t know how the players from both teams handle this week when Sunday was so emotionally charged. There has to be some type of therapy done for them, because if us normal folk struggle from just spectating then the players must feel it 10 fold.

The players have lots of money to comfort them.

 

[Johnny92]

I don’t know if Adam gave instruction or not, maybe he did, but thats where he needed to tell them just tuck the ball run hard and straight and get it to me on the 5th.

Man I’m not going to get over this loss. It’s not the loss, it’s the how they lost and how I believe it will effect them going forward.

The panthers lost their frost gf but they stormed home and nearly won, they took that going forward we did the complete opposite.

Yeah I think if their first grand final lost doesn't happen in that fashion they don't win against us.
Clearly even said that in the presser.

We probably only needed one thing to go our way in the final 10 but it didn't. We were up against it, I was thinking just get us down there and Reynolds will slot a 2 point field goal but even if we got down there the wind would of made it impossible to do.
How we come back from is the only thing I'm worried about right now but that's a 5 month wait.. Were either going to be ruthless and be even better than this season or we will go into our shells.
The guys were really hurting which I hope they use that as their motivation next season.

 

[BrisbaneBunny]

It will be much better that the years you'll now spend in the wilderness because you thought a rookie with half the talent could replace your captain and most important player

Better finding that out now after a year and fixing it, than waiting 6 years for nothing to happen. I'd have been happier to make the grandfinal probably. But I am glad we missed all together tbh. Means there will be meaningful change. I am just happy we bit the bullet and moved on the player we knew couldn't get us over the line in the biggest game of the year.