VOTE Milford or Croft?

[Unbreakable]

I genuinely think I've found the primary issue.

For whatever reason, Milford has taken a back seat to Croft in the kicking department since the season resumed. Look at his kicking metres in Round 1 & 2 compared to the following 5 weeks.

What has caused this?.. Is this Milford being passive? Milford having no confidence? Seibold's coaching? Croft demanding the footy too much? The hooker passing the footy right too much?

 

[Xzei]

tired of watching milf bunny hop across field

 

[broncsgoat]

I genuinely think I've found the primary issue.

For whatever reason, Milford has taken a back seat to Croft in the kicking department since the season resumed. Look at his kicking metres in Round 1 & 2 compared to the following 5 weeks.

View attachment 8587

What has caused this?.. Is this Milford being passive? Milford having no confidence? Seibold's coaching? Croft demanding the footy too much? The hooker passing the footy right too much?

Milf's been listening to everyone screaming that he cant direct a team around the field and should just run it, and let Croft control the team. Now when he's trying to run it more no one goes with him and the entire team is fucking gassed because they're all fucking unfit and undisciplined.

Croft being a fucking potato isn't helping Milfs game, he needs to control the team imo and not be told he cant do it.

 

[007]

I genuinely think I've found the primary issue.

For whatever reason, Milford has taken a back seat to Croft in the kicking department since the season resumed. Look at his kicking metres in Round 1 & 2 compared to the following 5 weeks.

View attachment 8587

What has caused this?.. Is this Milford being passive? Milford having no confidence? Seibold's coaching? Croft demanding the footy too much? The hooker passing the footy right too much?

Hes is one of the worst confidence players ive seen. He cannot get himself into a game and struggles to methodically pick and choose times. His spontaneous natural instinct cannot read a game unfortunately. As juxtaposition as this is, someone with a good feeling and read can feel the momentum and run with it - he cannot.

 

[Foordy]

how can you have Niu/Isaako, Dearden and Turpin in your spine and have salary cap pressure lmao

because we are paying:

Milford $1 million to eat maccas

Bird about 800k to do rehab; Kahu 400k also to do rehab

Boyd 800k to do ... actually, i'm not sure what we are paying him to do, but you can be sure he isn't doing it

 

[GCBRONCO]

How about we just flip a coin, heads Milford, tails Croft.

 

[johnyE]

Milf is probably the better player on balance ,but he's a 'grabber ' can't tackle or doesn't want to tackle and they target him , and that's where he's a liability. If he's not adding then he's just taking away. If he only played like we know he can , my pick all day. He needs to be dropped .

 

[Accept]

I'm not sure what Dearden will provide except more heartache. But if one has to go, Croft is the logical choice as his future at Red Hill is very uncertain as he has been a complete bust. None of these changes will be "season turning" though.

 

[gUt]

For mine it has to be Milford who makes way. Croft is dangerous close to the line at least. His short kicking game is pretty good. He's made to look bad by constantly having to bomb from 40-50 out every set. Milford is either at fullback or he's not in the side.

Good luck to Dearden, he's going to need it.

 

[BroncsFan]

I don't think I've seen enough of Dearden to know who is best to partner with him.

If Dearden's kicking game isn't up to scratch then we are forcing Milf to be the one to get the team around the field and that's not the best use of him.

From what I've seen of Dearden he looks like a lesser version of 2014/15 BHunt ... that's not a bad thing because BHunt over that period was unstoppable.

He looks like he likes to take the line on and then has the strength to shrug tacklers off... like Bhunt he doesnt use footwork to get through the line just his strength.

At this stage I haven't seen enough of Dearden's passing and kicking game to know who he's best suited to be partnered with.

If it's based on form then I'm keeping Croft.

Most of the good stuff that we've had this year has come down the right and he seems better at getting his outside men involved in the play.. looking at the tries and other things off the top of my head I can think of:
- Staggs first try against cows... shape down the right side to get Staggs 1v1
- Croft's cross field kick leading to the try for TPJ
- Isaako's try vs cows... shape down the right to put TPJ into some space leading to a great try
- Croft with a clean line break behind the ruck vs cows... I think the support wasn't there to finish it though
- Staggs 1st try vs Souths... cut out ball from Croft to get Staggs 1v1 on Burns
- Milf's great solo try vs souths
- Staggs 2nd try was Haas skipping along the line leading to offload to Staggs who then did the rest
- Staggs 3rd try was off a Milf bomb which Herbie caught before offloading to Staggs who then did the rest
- Croft's try vs parra ... clean line break after the defensive line pushed up too high
- Milf's bombed try off Croft's kick vs Parra
- Boyd's bombed try of Milf's kick vs Parra? (I think it was Milf's kick)
- Boyd's bombed try off Croft's kick vs roosters?
- Staggs try vs eagles was off a Croft bomb, with Coates taking the catch and Staggs doing the rest
- Coates try vs eagles was off a Milf cross field kick which was well placed
- Boyd's try vs eagles was off some nice shape to the left
- Boyd's second try (which was disallowed) was also some nice shape down the left... but DCE's milk did leave a massive hole for Boyd to wonder through
- Niu break against titans... Croft dug into the line behind the ruck to get TPJ 1v1 leading to the offload
- Herbie's try off Croft's grubber vs titans
- Coates first try vs warriors was shape put on down the right side
- Herbie's try off a Milford bomb vs warriors

So of the 20 items there I have 12 to Croft and 7 to Milf... (Staggs 2nd try to neither).

You could say that Croft has better weapons available to him with TPJ and Staggs, but Milf had Fifita for rounds 1 & 2 and I can only remember the one linebreak from Fifita, which had nothing to do with Milf.

I just think Croft has been better at getting his edge into shape compared to Milf, and has been better at getting his weapons into 1v1 situations i.e. getting Staggs early ball, getting TPJ isolated on the opposition half, etc. which is something we used to curse the side for not being able to do with Roberts.

Milford is also miles out of form and I think bringing Dearden in with an out of form Milford is not a great move

 

[IceWorks]

It will be interesting to see. Milly, Crofty and Boydy have been the teachers pet's it would seem, also perhaps Corey Quotes until last weekend, if no changes from this quartet I would expect at the minimum these players to be put on notice, or consideration of perhaps making changes if thing's don't improve, something strongly worded along those lines. After all there are only so many 50+ floggings a patient man can tolerate!

 

[Super Freak]

Croft should be dropped.

Milford and Dearden were doing well when they were partnered together last year. Give them another crack.

 

[Unbreakable]

I voted Milford for the record.

I don't think we'll survive with a Croft & Dearden halves pairing. In their performances so far I haven't seen anything which has indicated that either of them are capable of finding the grass on a kick from our own half, nor have I seen evidence that either of them can kick the ball more than ~40 metres. If we have that halves pairing we better be prepared for the opposition to begin most of their sets 30-40 metres away from their try line.

 

[broncsgoat]

This is a lot closer than I was anticipating.

 

[GCBRONCO]

Croft should be dropped.

Milford and Dearden were doing well when they were partnered together last year. Give them another crack.

Except Milford was being carried by Dearden and O'Sullivan in at halfback and Turpin at hooker, it wasn't a coincidence Milford was moved to fullback to attempt to kickstart his attack nor a coincidence when both Dearden and O'Sullivan got injured the present day Milford appeared. Even when Croft got injured in our second game of 2020 Milford fell straight back into old habits right then and there.

I'm not convinced Croft is currently the answer though and happy to give Dearden a shot, but if you go down that path it has to be made clear to Milford this is it, no more excuses and no more defending him if he continues to dish out turd performances.

 

[K-Style]

If Dearden's kicking game isn't up to scratch then we are forcing Milf to be the one to get the team around the field and that's not the best use of him.

From what I've seen of Dearden he looks like a lesser version of 2014/15 BHunt ... that's not a bad thing because BHunt over that period was unstoppable.

Yeah not to sure about Dearden's long kicking game. Ben Hunt kicked 11,332m in 2015 which was 3,929m more metres than anyone else that year. We're still retreating every set but at least Milford has developed his kicking game since Hunt left.
Also worried about goal kicking duties as our goal kicker is dropping the ball and running off the wing in defence.

 

[GCBRONCO]

Milford's long distance kicking game can be good (in fact I liked a few of his efforts against the Warriors). when he puts it to good use. My concern is he still hasn't learnt how to control a game with it. He tends to rely too much on bombing the opposition at times they are never one and in doing so giving the opposition either a 7 tackle set or easy kick return metres and not looking to put the ball dead into touch to give the boys a chance to get a breather, set a strong defensive line and try to get the opposition make a mistake. That said I would agree he has the better longer kicking game then Croft, Croft has the better shorter kicking game.

I'm going with Milford, but not with a lot of confidence.

 

[Maroon4life]

For mine I’m dropping Milford.

I think Milford has the higher skill ceiling but since 2015 he has been on a steady decline & that is under the coaching of both Seibold & Bennett.

Drop him now and look to shop him to other clubs from this year on. Why persist with him? Do the Milford supporters believe that he’s going to play better for less money in ‘22?

We’ve sacrificed a lot of other players for Milford’s benefit, time for Milford to face the axe.