Justin Hodges Discussion

[mitch222]

Hodges needs to start getting greedy with the ball. He is our best attacking weapon and we barely get the ball to him with space to move in the attacking 20. And I'm not talking about the dummy half runs either. When you give him early ball, 9/10 he creates a half chance at least with his ability to stand up the opposite centre normally.
Thaiday continues to play up the middle and be wasted. He is one of the competitions most destructive fringe runners and causes a lot of problems for teams when he is on the fringes. Look no further than game 2 last year for state of origin where he pretty much ran over James Maloney all night and carved up.

 

[Nashy]

Re: Sam Thaiday

I don't understand. When did it become okay to wear a Broncos jersey and just be "Playing ok" or "Better than last year".

Clearly it's the same attitude that Hook has.

 

[Morkel]

Re: Sam Thaiday

Hodges needs to start getting greedy with the ball. He is our best attacking weapon and we barely get the ball to him with space to move in the attacking 20. And I'm not talking about the dummy half runs either. When you give him early ball, 9/10 he creates a half chance at least with his ability to stand up the opposite centre normally.
Thaiday continues to play up the middle and be wasted. He is one of the competitions most destructive fringe runners and causes a lot of problems for teams when he is on the fringes. Look no further than game 2 last year for state of origin where he pretty much ran over James Maloney all night and carved up.

Normally I'd agree, but while he can often create something out of nothing, he has recently had the tendency to try too hard and come up with an error. Often putting the team under more pressure. I'd prefer he lays low until he sees an opportunity.

 

[winslow_wong]

Re: Sam Thaiday

Hodges needs to start getting greedy with the ball. He is our best attacking weapon and we barely get the ball to him with space to move in the attacking 20. And I'm not talking about the dummy half runs either. When you give him early ball, 9/10 he creates a half chance at least with his ability to stand up the opposite centre normally.
Thaiday continues to play up the middle and be wasted. He is one of the competitions most destructive fringe runners and causes a lot of problems for teams when he is on the fringes. Look no further than game 2 last year for state of origin where he pretty much ran over James Maloney all night and carved up.

hodges used to be more effective with a ballplayer (lockyer) putting him into holes etc. and with that element he was able to run from dummy half every now and then. now the only way he gets the ball is running at dummyhalf and most teams are aware of it now. there's been a lot of cases this year where he just got tackled by the marker not even making a metre.

 

[Bucking Beads]

Re: Sam Thaiday

Hodges is greedy enough. We play better footy without him.

 

[Rally Towel]

Re: Sam Thaiday

Hodges is greedy enough. We play better footy without him.

I hate to say it but you're right. I still rate him, despite some recent patchy performances, but he tends to disrupt the structure due to over involvement.

He obviously wants to lead from the front but he needs to take a back seat more often. Quality not quantity is key.

 

[broncos4life]

Re: Sam Thaiday

Hodges is greedy enough. We play better footy without him.

Your right. I love hodgo but he can't seem to learn that he doesn't need to carry the side anymore.

We play so much better with Copley at centre

 

[Nashy]

Re: Sam Thaiday

Mainly because Copley isn't afraid to pass the ball to someone who is actually a chance of getting to the line. Hodges doesn't seem to trust anyone, especially his winger. He makes some really dumbshit decisions to run the ball sometimes.

 

[Alec]

Re: Sam Thaiday

I dunno, I thought Copley has been a bigger ball hog than Hodges this year. Hodges has laid on some nice passes, though it's been usually with more than one man on his outside.

Copley's strength has been running into holes.

 

[Rabbir]

Re: Sam Thaiday

They need to move Copley to left centre which his natural position.

 

[winslow_wong]

Re: Sam Thaiday

They need to move Copley to left centre which his natural position.

enter anthony griffin andddd copley stays at wing forever

 

[Brett]

Re: Sam Thaiday

They need to move Copley to left centre which his natural position.

Right Centre. Right foot step, left hand fend.

 

[uptheguts]

Frankly I am surprised Hodges has played as well as he has this year , since returning from his crippling injury. I rate him as one of the best ever Bronco players. Up there with the likes of Geno and Kevin Walters. With all due respect to Copley , he just not in the same class. In fact Copley is still very much a work in progress who shows promise but not yet really delivered consistently.

The one thing I don't like about the way Hodges plays is how he anchors himself to the right hand side in attack. Too often the ball comes to a stop before reaching him and he ends up passing it back to the left from dummy half or he kind of loiters on the blind side. Why cant he sometimes just run back in field and become part of the left hand side attack, especially when we are in the red zone.

If Hodges is down on his participation rate this year, let's not forget whose playing at 5/8.

 

[Big Pete]

Hodges is a Broncos legend and arguably the most important player behind our 2006 win.

Been one of the best for the Maroons this series too.

But he's been frustrating as a Broncos fan.

Has basically played his best footy when he's played as a modified fullback and has been really ordinary at centre. Outside of the tunnel ball to Copley I feel like he's hindered more than he's helped.

A tough situation really. He's still one of our most talented players but the problem is he can't string enough quality games together. He's one of those players I'd consider moving on if the club wanted to make big changes to personnel.

But I'm hoping it doesn't have to come to that. I hope the Broncos make the right changes in other key positions with Hodges on board and Justin plays his best and leads us to lucky #7.

 

[M.B.88]

Given how great Copley has played this year at Centre, why not switch hodges to 5/8th??

 

[Morkel]

Given how great Copley has played this year at Centre, why not switch hodges to 5/8th??

I should have suggested that.

 

[broncos4life]

Given how great Copley has played this year at Centre, why not switch hodges to 5/8th??

It's a fantastic idea... shame we will never see it.

I think this is what frustrates me the most. The hoffman experiment has failed miserably, everyone can see it (except supercoach) and this is the perfect opportunity change things. Use the bye to put someone else at 6, be it Hodges, taylor, duncan, nicholls (pending injury) kikorima etc. and move hoffman to the wing (or the bulldogs if he sooks).

But we all know that come Tuesday supercoach will name an unchanged line up, with the exception of he cavalry returning... and its frustrating as hell

 

[mitch222]

Given how great Copley has played this year at Centre, why not switch hodges to 5/8th??

You know if you said that earlier this year I would have laughed at you but now it looks like a decent idea. Hodges had one thing Hoffman will just never have and that's vision to see when a play is on and make the correct decision. When he played there earlier this year against the Rabbitohs we scored a lot of points (sure we got beat but hey he did his job at 5/8 which was to put points on the board). He showed more vision in one game than Hoffman has showed all year. Its not a bad suggestion at all