Areas That Need Fixing for 2017

[bazza]

What happened to Milford fitness? He looked sharp and lean at the start of the season up until the cowboys game where he won us the game. By the end of the season he was pudgy

He certainly looks to be above his comfortable playing weight. Just have a look at some highlights of him at the Raiders, and the difference in body shape is quite stark. He just looked so lean and fast back then. Now he hasn't got the same speed and his footwork is just sluggish at times. He's certainly lost some zip and the fast feet are nowhere as effective anymore.

I don't understand trying to make naturally smaller blokes, who rely on their speed and movement, bigger. By making them heavier, your eliminating their major weapon, without adding too much to their defence anyway. Milford will never be the best defensively, and by adding a few extra kilos your not really improving his defence, but your certainly taking away from other aspects of his game. I just don't think the added one or two percent in defence is worth reducing his attacking brilliance.

 

[Mitchell_Broncos]

He certainly looks to be above his comfortable playing weight. Just have a look at some highlights of him at the Raiders, and the difference in body shape is quite stark. He just looked so lean and fast back then. Now he hasn't got the same speed and his footwork is just sluggish at times. He's certainly lost some zip and the fast feet are nowhere as effective anymore.

I don't understand trying to make naturally smaller blokes, who rely on their speed and movement, bigger. By making them heavier, your eliminating their major weapon, without adding too much to their defence anyway. Milford will never be the best defensively, and by adding a few extra kilos your not really improving his defence, but your certainly taking away from other aspects of his game. I just don't think the added one or two percent in defence is worth reducing his attacking brilliance.

I agree with his fitness a bit if you watched the game how he was making line breaks like there was no tomorrow against rabbits last year. When we versed the panthers this season he didn't even bother to chase the opponent 90m from him when he was 5m from him when he started to run away. He started to fix it towards the end but he doesn't have the same speed that he had even against the cows in round 4 he looked good there with a few of his line breaks where he scored after being ankle tapped and when he broke the tackle and made a line break and then passed to jimmy to score. He just started to loose all that this season I hope he fixes it for next season.

 

[Sirlee oldman]

Maybe it's just his mothers cooking. A couple of sessions with a nutritionist in the off season might sort it out.

 

[johnny plath]

In regards to the rule changes, the reduction in interchange was designed to bring back the element of fatigue. It was supposed to eliminate a lot of the wrestle and quicken the game up, which in theory is meant to benefit the more mobile teams and disadvantage the bigger teams. Now in reality, that should of happened, but due to incompetent refereeing, it didn't.

I can't recall any of the bigger teams struggling to adapt to the rule change, and instead all the smaller packs were probably the ones who were negatively impacted by it the most. As long as the referees remain at their current level, the rules won't be properly adjudicated and the bigger teams will always dominate over the smaller teams. We've gained no advantage from the reduction in interchange.

We need to get past this blaming the ref mentality. ..we sound like all of the other whiny bitch supporters of other teams. I think the wrestle s is overstated and it's no where near levels it has been in the past. Our problem was we had smaller more mobile forwards but chose to play one out rubbish that saw us get monstered and fatigued. Our hooker s also don't really bring the forwards on at the advantage line. .we tend to recieve the ball quite deep. In Games where we actually moved big teams around such as against melbourne we looked our best. A few have mentioned Bennett as being a little out of touch and i agree to an extent..think we lacked imagination and poor game plans in general.

 

[ningnangnong]

Or Ash Taylor, JNiko, and Parcell whom were also sent packing...

I'm fairly certain WB would love to have kept all three of those players, but there's a salary cap we have to adhere to, and I don't think he wanted to stand in the way of a few young blokes looking to create a name for themselves in the game. To do that would go against his whole ethos as a coach.

You can't compare it to getting rid of dead weight like Hoffman and Kennedy.

 

[Mitchell_Broncos]

Imagine how gun our side would be though if we kept Parcell, Ash and a few others though they have improved so much since they've left

 

[_wwong]

He certainly looks to be above his comfortable playing weight. Just have a look at some highlights of him at the Raiders, and the difference in body shape is quite stark. He just looked so lean and fast back then. Now he hasn't got the same speed and his footwork is just sluggish at times. He's certainly lost some zip and the fast feet are nowhere as effective anymore.

I don't understand trying to make naturally smaller blokes, who rely on their speed and movement, bigger. By making them heavier, your eliminating their major weapon, without adding too much to their defence anyway. Milford will never be the best defensively, and by adding a few extra kilos your not really improving his defence, but your certainly taking away from other aspects of his game. I just don't think the added one or two percent in defence is worth reducing his attacking brilliance.

You think they would have learnt from benny barba. These type of players make it to first grade with their speed. Take that away and they are nothing but small, slow and heavy passengers.

 

[Rico]

What happened to Milford fitness? He looked sharp and lean at the start of the season up until the cowboys game where he won us the game. By the end of the season he was pudgy

I thought the same . Matt shirvington makes a good point where he said rugby league is terrible at getting players who are so nibble and Athletic and build them up to try and make run thru people.

I thought his his defence got worse the heavier he looked

 

[Porthoz]

I'm fairly certain WB would love to have kept all three of those players, but there's a salary cap we have to adhere to, and I don't think he wanted to stand in the way of a few young blokes looking to create a name for themselves in the game. To do that would go against his whole ethos as a coach.

You can't compare it to getting rid of dead weight like Hoffman and Kennedy.

The reasoning behind it doesn't matter. His job is primarily to look after the Broncos.He criticised the Broncos about letting Corey Norman go, and he himself said that he wouldn't allow cases like that happen again...
Yet, he allowed the 3 most promising players we had to leave, and it really wouldn't have made that much of a dent in the cap to keep at least 1 or 2 of them a bit longer.

 

[LittleDavey]

Imagine how gun our side would be though if we kept Parcell, Ash and a few others though they have improved so much since they've left

But who else would you have let go to compensate?

And with all due respect [MENTION=2221]Porthoz[/MENTION], I usually agree with you but not on this. You're speculating on cap space. Look at our depth this year - it was horrid, we have a very solid top 15 or so, but the down side of that is the large gap in experience of the rest of the top 25 squad. Parcell may have helped with our centre issues, but JNik and Taylor likely wouldn't have got a run even with all the issues. I do agree they're all potentially stars, and I would have liked to keep them - but you can't keep them all, either. We can hypothesise that JNik would have made the step up to NRL better if he was eased into it rather than chucked in the deep end. But Ash got thrown in the deep end and did well - would he be coming along so well if he had've been languishing in Q-Cup, as he would have been if we kept him? At the end of the day it's all hypothetical, there's no way of knowing.

Norman got pushed out IIRC? Neither JNik, Parcell or Taylor did; they all chose to follow greater $$ and opportunity and no-one can really blame them for that. It's a different situation. And I fully agree with the Norman culling btw, he's a first class wanker, despite how talented he is and how good a player he could be.

 

[Allo]

The problem in the hindsight argument over players leaving is that generally they're going to a club that needs that player, so that player looks 'better' than what we have because they improve the team they go to

Granville is the biggest one. NQ had no hooker with Seggers, Payne leaving in previous years and Kostjasyn and Ray-Ray was all they had, neither established (or good) hookers. Granville comes in and they immediately improve

Parcell is kinda the same at Manly. Ballin leaves to the Tigers and Parcell is the only true hooker there. Manly had a shit season, but Parcell made it less shit than it could've been

Jayden thought he could play first grade and didn't see the opportunity here with at least 4 players in front of him. Why should he or the club cop flak for that decision, both at that time, and especially now when he didn't have a great time down there? Add to that the 5 other halves Easts signed for next year, he'll be free again soon

 

[K-Style]

Was Granville leaving even a Bennet decision? Part from the timing Paul Green and Granville had already worked together at Wynnum Seagulls taking out the 2011/2012 seasons.
At the end of 2014 Granville still had some fitness and defense to work on. Sitting on the bench the whole game wasn't helping.

I remember one of the few times Macca made a line break he was run down very quickly. To be fair I can also remember a time when Granville was run down - by Inglis.

 

[bazza]

We need to get past this blaming the ref mentality. ..we sound like all of the other whiny bitch supporters of other teams. I think the wrestle s is overstated and it's no where near levels it has been in the past. Our problem was we had smaller more mobile forwards but chose to play one out rubbish that saw us get monstered and fatigued. Our hooker s also don't really bring the forwards on at the advantage line. .we tend to recieve the ball quite deep. In Games where we actually moved big teams around such as against melbourne we looked our best. A few have mentioned Bennett as being a little out of touch and i agree to an extent..think we lacked imagination and poor game plans in general.

I'm fairly certain pointing out the fact that the referees aren't adjudicating to the rules set out by the NRL at the start of the year, is not 'blaming the referees'. All I'm saying is that whenever there's a new rule change introduced, it becomes futile when referees continue to referee according to the old rules. I'm sure that if the referees actually governed according to the new rules, the intended outcome of fatigue would be reached.

 

[bazza]

You think they would have learnt from benny barba. These type of players make it to first grade with their speed. Take that away and they are nothing but small, slow and heavy passengers.

Exactly and their defence isn't part of their strengths anyway, so adding on extra weight won't automatically make them world class defenders. It might help in the collision, but often their speed helps them with their defence anyway since they allow players to run to their outside, and then they cut them down with a legs tackle, or force them into touch. When they're heavier, they get more tired in defence, and turning to chase requires a little more extra effort. Smaller players are generally smarter and craftier in the way they defend. Over the years, they develop ways to stop the opposition without using conventional techniques as such, and can more than handle themselves with a little help from the players around them.

 

[Porthoz]

But who else would you have let go to compensate?

And with all due respect @Porthoz, I usually agree with you but not on this. You're speculating on cap space. Look at our depth this year - it was horrid, we have a very solid top 15 or so, but the down side of that is the large gap in experience of the rest of the top 25 squad. Parcell may have helped with our centre issues, but JNik and Taylor likely wouldn't have got a run even with all the issues. I do agree they're all potentially stars, and I would have liked to keep them - but you can't keep them all, either. We can hypothesise that JNik would have made the step up to NRL better if he was eased into it rather than chucked in the deep end. But Ash got thrown in the deep end and did well - would he be coming along so well if he had've been languishing in Q-Cup, as he would have been if we kept him? At the end of the day it's all hypothetical, there's no way of knowing.

Norman got pushed out IIRC? Neither JNik, Parcell or Taylor did; they all chose to follow greater $$ and opportunity and no-one can really blame them for that. It's a different situation. And I fully agree with the Norman culling btw, he's a first class wanker, despite how talented he is and how good a player he could be.

As I said previously, I'm not saying we should've kept all of them, but we ended up keeping the least talented of them.
Without the benefit of hindsight (I've got the posts to prove it), I would've preferred to keep Parcell and Ash instead of Travis Wadell and Knik for example.

Cap wise, there is no speculation. None of them was going to break the bank, given their youth and inexperience. It's not like they went to earn big bucks at their respective clubs...and JNik is very young, so he could've still fallen under the U20's.

 

[Cult]

Surely Parcell and Taylor's new contracts were worth more than Waddell and KNik's last contract?

 

[Kimlo]

Didn't both those players leave because they had better opportunities for first grade, rather than actual money? All three if we're counting Jnik.

 

[Cult]

Didn't both those players leave because they had better opportunities for first grade, rather than actual money? All three if we're counting Jnik.

I think Porthoz is still under the impression that Parcell and Taylor would have overthrown McCullough and Hunt. If that is the case, he's wrong.