POST GAME Round 12 - Warriors vs Broncos

[Thelmus]

I'm a little surprised that hunt, once again is being judged on this result. No halfback shines with a poor pack, and the real questions need to be directed that way, assuming as people say, they were dominated (I only saw about 5 minutes of the game). Hunt put a beautiful kick in from what I did see for Roberts to eventually score. Could kodi have done so? Who knows? But we haven't seen it yet atleast. This is hunts first game back. He will get better. Show me a player who has shown their best, first game back.
I can't say I can judge kodi's future as a halfback, but I will say this. Hunt deserves more of a chance than what some people have afforded him. He is the first choice halfback. He is the more rounded player skillwise. He is coming back after weeks of a leg injury, in a team stripped by origin and sets a try up. One of only two scored. If kodi dominated the halfback spot fair enough, but he played second fiddle to Milford (who himself, did the same to hunt). Kodi has a bright future, but let it be that and not something that rushes him into a situation he can't handle, only to be cast aside when he fails.

 

[Porthoz]

This is completely unneeded. Taking shots at people who like Hunt doesn't take away from what was said about Kodi. It divides the issue into Hunt fans v Kniko fans like you can't be both. It's just mudslinging.

You may be right about the mudslinging, but I'm not, and will never be a fence sitter. We realistically have 2 options for the position at the moment and in the near future: Hunt OR Kodi, not both!
Preferring one doesn't mean hating the other, but that's what a lot of people will turn it into with their speech of hate this player, love that player.

Ben Hunt has been down on form and may not be the half we need but to say he will NEVER be a halfback is talking in extremes. He may never be a top tier halfback or even a GF winning halfback but for 2 seasons at least, he was a very good halfback.

Sorry, I don't think that is an extreme, in the sense that I believe he is a very good 5/8, but not a halfback. He's a great ad-hoc player, a very good runner of the ball, and he's tough as nails. He's not however, a game manager, or a good kicker, and he isn't very good at utilising players around him, which are the characteristics which make a good halfback.

Again, Kodi very well could develop into a fine halfback. Maybe not good enough for us in your opinion, but with the Luke Brooks, Chad Townsends, and Aden Sezers of the wolrd forging out decent careers in the NRL, Kodi definitely can be a halfback. I think Kodi has developed nicely during his time at 7 but there's no need to pretend it's an objective truth that he has improved more in 6 weeks than Hunt has in years. Kodi has done a great job with our right side edge, but better than Hunt EVER has? EVER? I don't think you can make that call.

I do stand by that call. I've never seen Hunt utilise our right edge, or that side being as dangerous with him in the team, as it was in the last 6 weeks.

As to Kodi, again... it's no about the player's value, or whether he is good enough for us. I would have Sezer ahead of him in our team in a heartbeat, although I don't think he is as talented as Kodi or Hunt for that matter. But he has he tools to complete our team and make a partnership with Milford more valuable.
And that last part has always been what this is about. Improve the team through the sum of its parts!

In your defence, it's hard to share your views in a reasonable way when replying to a post that was all bait and added nothing to the discussion (the people think Kodi is Langer post). But in your not-defence(?) you shouldn't have replied to it seriously to begin with.

Of course it was a bait, which many of us make themselves guilty of, me included. But my answer, as much as it could have been more diplomatic, was definitely the only way it could be: serious!

 

[Huge]

Maybe, I just saw that we needed to shore up the middle and I think Hunt would do that better than Waddell, who unless I'm mistaken I think got hooked for Kodi at about the 20th minute and didn't go back on?

We won't have that problem normally when McCullough is around.

He wasn't hooked as you wrote, he was in the team to do a certain job as WB said before the match. He was there to absorb the punishment until the sting went out of the game. He's a better defender than Kodi and did a good job while on the field. It was always the plan. He played 27 mins, missed one tackle and made fifteen with no errors. He did the job professionally as required by WB.

 

[Jason Simmons]

He wasn't hooked as you wrote, he was in the team to do a certain job as WB said before the match. He was there to absorb the punishment until the sting went out of the game. He's a better defender than Kodi and did a good job while on the field. It was always the plan. He played 27 mins, missed one tackle and made fifteen with no errors. He did the job professionally as required by WB.

Fair enough, I didn't get to see the end of the game due to work, however, did he do those 27 minutes straight and then go off and not come back on?

All I can recall is seeing Kodi earlier in in the first half then I would have expected and then didn't notice Waddell again, which is why I thought he got hooked.

But I fully admit I didn't see the whole game through.

 

[Foordy]

Fair enough, I didn't get to see the end of the game due to work, however, did he do those 27 minutes straight and then go off and not come back on?

All I can recall is seeing Kodi earlier in in the first half then I would have expected and then didn't notice Waddell again, which is why I thought he got hooked.

But I fully admit I didn't see the whole game through.

Your right once he left the field, he never returned

 

[Number6]

Take the 7 best players out of any sporting team in history and you'll be hard up finding one that could still win a game. The first half was horrible but the second half they started to build a bit of momentum and had we not turned the ball over after Roberts second try we very well could have pushed for a photo finish.


As fans of our team we were obviously all wishful for a dream result in which we stil managed a win over a team with an international spine but unfortunately the result reflected the more realistic outcome: A decent enough performance that wasn't good enough to get the win. I don't think we embarrassed ourself at all.


I'm probably one of the bigger supporters of Kniko at 7 on BHQ but between him and Hunt it really is splitting hairs at this point and realistically you want both in the team somehow. Considering which players were missing I think the team that was picked for this round was the most logical. Benji played fine, though as usual he looked like a nightmare for his own teammates to predict and react accordingly too. In hindsight you could argue Kniko in the 6 would have been a better option but imo that would have weakened our dummyhalf more than it improved our halves. If Macca played I think we could have really pushed the warriors.

It was a 6/10 effort from a 4/10 team. Can't ask for much more than that.

Yeah wish I got paid 100000s of dollars for a 6/10 effort. Don't mind that we lost agree understandable with disruptions but dislike stupidity and lack of effort. Maybe I'm a harsh judge but we're the richest team in the competition and haven't had a premiership in over 10 years.

 

[Foordy]

richest team in the competition and haven't had a premiership in over 10 years.

That means jack shit...

Just because we are the richest team in the comp doesn't mean we can spend that money. in fact we can't spend any more than the poorest team in the comp can spend

 

[mitch222]

To be quite honest here, we only needed three more players and we win that on the weekend. If we added Moose, Gillett & Macca, we get the job done. Our middle defence would have been a lot stiffer and we would have made a lot more metres. One thing this game does prove, its how valuable not only Macca is to the team with regards to going forward but also Oates coming out of our own end.

 

[theshed]

Yeah wish I got paid 100000s of dollars for a 6/10 effort. Don't mind that we lost agree understandable with disruptions but dislike stupidity and lack of effort. Maybe I'm a harsh judge but we're the richest team in the competition and haven't had a premiership in over 10 years.

I guess I worded that poorly. I was saying they played better than would be expected of a team missing such a large amount of experience and talent.

 

[Battler]

Maybe I'm a harsh judge but we're the richest team in the competition and haven't had a premiership in over 10 years.

We'd be in a better spot if Origin didn't cut into the real comp and basically doom us to an under 50% WR for 2.5 months. You can't win the comp without finishing in the top 4.

The aforementioned is probably why the NRL keeps a blatantly shit schedule in place. Gotta artificially inflate the shit house, poorly managed basket case clubs somehow - even though without teams like us and the Dogs there wouldn't be an NRL.

 

[FaceOfMutiny]

This game went exactly how I expected it to.

 

[Morkel]

For me it just came down to errors. Far too many errors. The disappointing part is that they came from our senior players mostly. Roberts with three in total, two of those, had he held them, would have likely given him space and genuine chances to get through the line. Kahu was shit unfortunately with two drops and horrible positioning (though you can forgive that somewhat as he's not playing fullback regularly any more). Hunt with two, and that doesn't include his kick out on the full. Seven other players dropped it too. You just can't put your team under that much pressure.

Because of this, any deficiencies in attack or defence are somewhat mooted because it doesn't give a true indication of how the team should perform should they have their fair share of possession. Unless of course we intend on playing every game with a 61% completion rate, conceding 14 errors, and have nearly a full quarter of the game spent in out 20 metre zone.

 

[Thelmus]

For me it just came down to errors. Far too many errors. The disappointing part is that they came from our senior players mostly. Roberts with three in total, two of those, had he held them, would have likely given him space and genuine chances to get through the line. Kahu was shit unfortunately with two drops and horrible positioning (though you can forgive that somewhat as he's not playing fullback regularly any more). Hunt with two, and that doesn't include his kick out on the full. Seven other players dropped it too. You just can't put your team under that much pressure.

Because of this, any deficiencies in attack or defence are somewhat mooted because it doesn't give a true indication of how the team should perform should they have their fair share of possession. Unless of course we intend on playing every game with a 61% completion rate, conceding 14 errors, and have nearly a full quarter of the game spent in out 20 metre zone.

Sounds to me like a team hobbled together, with players playing out of position, and some trying a little too hard perhaps, when the skill levels are not where they normally are. Losing macca was huge, and I suppose a different hooker playing with some players for the first time sent timing out and guaranteed some mistakes. If hunt and Benji had played a little more before this, they might have been able to direct the team to a more simple game plan to get them out of trouble, but I'm guessing they had their own problems. As I said, this is a game you hope for the best, bet expect worse. Be thankful they didn't put on 50 against us, and move on.

 

[Porthoz]

For me it just came down to errors. Far too many errors. The disappointing part is that they came from our senior players mostly. Roberts with three in total, two of those, had he held them, would have likely given him space and genuine chances to get through the line. Kahu was shit unfortunately with two drops and horrible positioning (though you can forgive that somewhat as he's not playing fullback regularly any more). Hunt with two, and that doesn't include his kick out on the full. Seven other players dropped it too. You just can't put your team under that much pressure.

Because of this, any deficiencies in attack or defence are somewhat mooted because it doesn't give a true indication of how the team should perform should they have their fair share of possession. Unless of course we intend on playing every game with a 61% completion rate, conceding 14 errors, and have nearly a full quarter of the game spent in out 20 metre zone.

Fully agree with this.
On top of it, we were really unlucky to miss Macca in the one game of the season we probably needed him most.

Really disappointed in most senior players, except Glenn and some mitigation for Kahu who hasn't played in the position for a year.
Of the youngsters, Pearson and Ofahengaue impressed me the most. I hope Joe keeps putting his head down, because he has the motor and the talent to make a dent in the NRL.

 

[Foordy]

Sounds to me like a team hobbled together, with players playing out of position, and some trying a little too hard perhaps, when the skill levels are not where they normally are. Losing macca was huge, and I suppose a different hooker playing with some players for the first time sent timing out and guaranteed some mistakes. If hunt and Benji had played a little more before this, they might have been able to direct the team to a more simple game plan to get them out of trouble, but I'm guessing they had their own problems. As I said, this is a game you hope for the best, bet expect worse. Be thankful they didn't put on 50 against us, and move on.

I agree with this

Plenty of things went towards the loss ...

brand new spine
Hunt and Marshall had both just returned from injury
missing our best meter eaters (in McGuire, Gillett and Oates)
inexperience
positional changes

etc.

we weren't great, thats true, but we have seen worse performances from our origin depleted teams (at least that is the only game where we are missing our origin players this season)

 

[Brotherdu]

Lets face it, it was a shit performance, but it wasn't because Hunt was back, nor was it because Kodi was on the bench or because Benji started. We completed at ~60%, that is not because of any one person.

Too many key players were out and it hurt us. Just taking Gillette and McCullough out would have been bad enough because we lose so much in defense which is what our game plan revolves around. Asking fringe players to come in and replicate what they do is always going to be asking too much.

Having said that, what did we get out of this game?

• Hunt has a game under his belt. Lets face it, he's going to be our Halfback for the rest of the season unless WB all of a sudden decides he's shithouse and Kodi is better.
• We know what Kodi offers from the last 6 weeks of filling in for Hunt, so I don't have much problem giving Benji a game to see what he adds. It's the back end of the season that matters and having Benji around and involved is not a bad thing. He was also one of our better players.

 

[BroncsFan]

Sounds to me like a team hobbled together, with players playing out of position, and some trying a little too hard perhaps, when the skill levels are not where they normally are.

Just in regards to this I believe Roberts was very poor rather than trying too hard and it may have been due to getting overlooked by NSW.

Typically Roberts is a very hard worker out of our own end and makes strong carries from dummy half. Those kinds of runs were noticeably missing on Saturday. He was also dropping the ball cold.

It just looked like his head wasn't in it and I hope he's not down about not getting picked for origin... was he even picked for city/country or did he sit it out?? I didn't watch it so not sure.

 

[BroncsFan]

One thing that may have come back to bite us was leaving Hunt out of the tigers game. It would've been an easy game to return to with the side in form, milf taking some of the load and tigers a basket case. Would've given him the opportunity to blow out the cobwebs on a weak tigers outfit.

Instead they held off a week and brought him back with a team that has basically never played together travelling to New Zealand and up against a near full strength team.

Reports suggest he was right to play and they just gave him another week to be safe.