POST GAME [Round 19, 2024] Broncos vs Dragons

[thenry]

And other than 2 random hits, wtf is Piakura’s role in this team? Can’t run a decoy to save his life and made 35metres in 80 mins. Wtf is that.

And how many did Riki make? And how many good shots did Riki put on? Is Ricki's only role to terrorise fullbacks?

 

[Totally Unr3al]

Kevvie losing it at the boys. About time

Way too late

 

[Totally Unr3al]

Walters stormed out of the dressing room. The players will either respond or go further into their shells. Seems like 2021 again.

If the players had it in them, we wouldn’t be in this mess

 

[Big Pete]

most of that supreme talent on the roster has been fucking injured or otherwise missing games.

It doesn't matter if your name is Craig Bellamy, Ivan Cleary, Wayne Bennett or Kevin Walters ... if you lose your gun half, your gun full back, have to name a different backrow every game and throw in a spate of other injuries. you're going to struggle.

hell, I don't recall another injury crisis so bad (for any team) that a full 22 man squad couldn't be name on TLT.

Injuries certainly haven't helped.

On that last point, Walters could have named 22, he opted not to. I remember when the Roosters had their injury issues in 2021 they were calling in North Sydney Bears players outside of their squad to fill roles.

Walters had plenty of time to prepare for this and while I doubt it would have made a difference to the result the inability to cover all the bases falls squarely on him and management.

 

[Morkel]

WaLtERs iS sHiT anD OnLY iN thE teAm beCauSE oF hIS dAd!

FMD we had 37% possession in the first half. Mozer looked good but only because we stopped dropping the ball early in the count and the ref started to even out the 6-1 penalty count.

It's not just having about half of our salary cap injured or out for Origin, I think as much as Reynolds is appreciated here, people really don't seem to grasp what a difference he makes. Old, busted and slow, what an experienced halfback brings is under-rated. Not just the kicking game selection, or calling for the ball and shovelling it out to where it needs to go. It's keeping their eyes open every moment, spotting potential weak links in the defensive line, making sure they get worked over and exposed. Identifying patterns that can be exploited, working to the plan and telling the troops that they don't need to score off every fucking set, just hold the ball, run the correct shapes, fatigue the opposition where those weaknesses are and be ready to pull the trigger. That experience simply can not be replaced easily, especially not with (duh) inexperienced players like Mam, Madden, etc, that we've had to rely on while Reynolds has been out.

It's clear that whatever game plan Walters is giving the team, that inexperience has them failing at some of the most basic tasks (hold the fucking ball), causing them to panic and go away from that plan and falling in to the "score off every set" mindset.

 

[mstreet]

We lost this game due to bad decisions from Kev. Our big forwards did not have near enough minutes as they should have and we lacked players with size due to the bench consisting of 2 dummy halves and a centre. I understand we have a lot of injuries but you need to match dragons forward pack otherwise you will get bullied through the middle (which is what happened). Smoothy was stiched up by playing lock the whole game and got targeted as expected. Billy walters offers zero creativity and average passing and consistently gives players the ball flat footed and can’t drive momentum. We started playing footy once mozer came on and gave decent service to our halves and forwards and seemed to be getting them involved.

I could be wrong, as I often am, but I thought Billy had a great game.

The flat balls were to maximise our meters from our forwards with the rushing defence. I actually thought kevie coached well this week, knowing where the teams at.

We were always going to get monstered by St Merger. I thought Billy threw a couple of beautiful inside passed that allowed players to exploit gaps in the ruck. He scored a Billy kind of try. Put on a great hit, and was constantly wrapping up the attackers legs.

I'm not the greatest fan of Billy, but I'll tip my hat to him tonight. He's no Cam Smith unfortunately.

Smoothy at lock for me was about putting experience in play. We don't have the cattle with our injury crisis. Hetherington was better served as an impact forward than putting him at 13 and hoping Va'a Semu steps up from the bench. I thought kevie was being realistic. Mozer was a positive in another unhappy night.

Pretty happy with Kevin looking after player development in terms of not rushing development players. Blooding them progressively.

I'm happy he told Walsh, first time around to be patient, and trust the process. Walsh suffers from immaturity to this day.

I'm in the acceptance phase of our fate. Accepting not making the 8, has taken out the anger. I'm not happy with our recruitment and retention department. I'd love Gus Gould in our business. Still wondering what the **** went on with Ikin. I'm pissed off with Lee Briers and Kevin around strategy. The arrogance we showed in round 1 pissed me off.

I don't know if breaking the bank for Walsh is in the teams best interests. Horse trading Hass could be though. I'd rather 2 Wilkinson's for the price of one Hass.

Apologies for the big post. Respectable scoreline in a game we weren't supposed to win. Still pissed about the Titans game...

 

[HarryAllan7]

Starting to look like 2023 was the fairytale outlier year where everything went magically right, and hid a lot of really glaring errors and problems.

Kevvie probably keeps his job for next year regardless of how this season plays out (because of the grand final last year and all the injuries this year), but boy his seat will be hot. Surely anything outside of a top 4 finish in 2025 and he will be gone.

Personally, I think it’s half coaching and half roster construction problems that have come to light even more with the injuries we’ve had. We have an extremely shallow, top heavy roster with very few good edge players, a lot of defensive question marks and no outside backs who can make yards out of their own end.

We are miles behind the pace at the moment and the job is only going to get harder with Reynolds getting older / more injured and some very expensive player contracts eating up our salary cap. Some big calls have to be made.

 

[Bull Shark]

I think some people should reign in the hysteria re Walters’ response to the questions about Blake Mozer.. that was a coach trying to keep the focus on the collective and not let it drift to the performance of an individual..

Mozer will get his praise behind closed doors.. The last thing the Broncos need given the state they’re in is some media angle about Mozer’s great cameo and Mozer feeling like he’s got first grade all sussed

 

[mstreet]

why do people suck Jensen off as much as they do? He’s a stat man. He has zero impact. Slow play the balls, no offload, no big hits and no slowing down the ruck. The bloke really provides nothing unless he’s surrounded by Carrigan, Haas, Flegler, Palasia…

He's a small forward on an equally small salary, offering tradesmen like performances, week in, week out. Does all the effort areas, and never shirks the tough carries.

Hass took most of the forwards money. 1.3 million for a forward is ridiculous. Horse trade him.

 

[Johnny92]

.
for a chunk of the game 3 of our spine players had played 20 NRL games combined - Rogers, Mozer, Sailor with Mam playing his second full season of NRL.
There is no way this combination trained pre season working together and this week was probably the first time that happened.

Missing our regular 1, 4, 7 and 13 that's every second player on a left hand side play and 3 key players for any type of shape.
Throw in Haas aswell and any plan for shape or a game plan will fall apart.
Our back rowers aren't seasoned vets like Capewell either so their going to struggle with new players around them.

Doesn't help too that probably every team we've played in the last 6 weeks has played their best game of the season while we've been starved of possession.

 

[Skathen]

I think some people should reign in the hysteria re Walters’ response to the questions about Blake Mozer.. that was a coach trying to keep the focus on the collective and not let it drift to the performance of an individual..

Mozer will get his praise behind closed doors.. The last thing the Broncos need given the state they’re in is some media angle about Mozer’s great cameo and Mozer feeling like he’s got first grade all sussed

You don't rob a new kid of a moment in the sun to try and redirect that focus onto your own child. That's extremely unprofessional. If he redirected it to namelss players who put in everything trying to get the result tonight - fine. But he didn't. He made the focus about Billy and that is so very wrong. I actually like Billy, but that statement was very alarming.

 

[Bucking Beads]

Despite the injuries it’s really not looking great for Kevvie. 50% of the seasons he’s coached the wheels have completely fallen off. That doesn’t happen to the good coaches. The club needs to demand more. I’m tired of us being this big rich club but happy accepting mediocrity Because we’re making $$&. We want to fucken win!

 

[Swordfish]

It kind of baffles me some of Kev’s decisions.
1. What good is Karapani on the bench & only end up playing final 10min?

2. Why did Arthurs play right wing & not Left Center? By opting to lY Mariner on the the right wing, our right side (Mariner, Staggs & Riki) would’ve started to gain confidence for the rest if the season.

3. The alarming thing for mine is — Kev’s regressing in decision making & overall coaching. A coach would mixup things if things are not going to the plan but not Kev it seems.

4. Kev seem to invite criticism of his post game pressers. I wish he took a different approach when asked of Mozer.

On a different note, Mozer is ready for grade and would only improve immensely IF given continued run.

 

[Old Mate]

To go from losing a GF by 2 to *this* is just a joke.

It's business as usual I'm afraid. 2023 may as well have never happened. Seibold got vilified and eventually flicked for what we just watched tonight. No desire, piss poor attitude, no respect for the ball or the tackle.....Just diabolical. Tonight really does feel like 2020-21.

I am embarrassed to be a Broncos supporter, and that is the first time I've ever felt that way. Kev (and everyone else at the club frankly) is out of time. It's time for Donuts to show what he's made of.

Ya kidding, we’re missing most of our first grade side and depth.

 

[Old Mate]

**** it was a hard game to watch. Fuckwit didn’t ground that ball in the first half and the captains challenge on the strip that got denied was fucking dogshit.

 

[Manofoneway]

It kind of baffles me some of Kev’s decisions.
1. What good is Karapani on the bench & only end up playing final 10min?

2. Why did Arthurs play right wing & not Left Center? By opting to lY Mariner on the the right wing, our right side (Mariner, Staggs & Riki) would’ve started to gain confidence for the rest if the season.

3. The alarming thing for mine is — Kev’s regressing in decision making & overall coaching. A coach would mixup things if things are not going to the plan but not Kev it seems.

4. Kev seem to invite criticism of his post game pressers. I wish he took a different approach when asked of Mozer.

On a different note, Mozer is ready for grade and would only improve immensely IF given continued run.

The issue is Mozer will join Rogers on the scrap heap after one bad performance, our fans are some of the worst in the world. He was great but we also had possession which we have been starved of in consecutive first halves of footy.

Absolutely nothing wrong with how kevy addressed the presser. Took ownership for the losses. If you heap praise on these young players they spend all week reading about how good they are and turn up shite the next week. It happens time and time again with young players.

 

[McHunt]

I'd be happy with Billy being our 7 next week, Smoothy starting then Mozer coming on for a stint or the rest of the game.

If Kev can't drop his son, he shouldn't be coach.

 

[Manofoneway]

If Kev can't drop his son, he shouldn't be coach.

Billy had a great game. Some excellent deception around the ruck, averaged more than 10 meters per run. Some good inside passes to forwards into space that got us rolling and scored a great Billy style try.

He conceded two penalties, one of which was not a strip and called that way from the commentator's. Other than that quite good.

Your boy Ezra mam probably had a worse performance and I would attribute our first halve woes evenly spread between him and Sailor. Both had shockers.