Round 24 - Broncos vs Knights - Post Match Discussion

[Harry Sack]

No, I won't be opening the Hodges to Retire thread :)

It was awesome to see that display live. Especially compared to the last game we watched live where we pretty much went insane with how disillusioned we were. But I'm not getting carried away, the Knights were seriously depleted. Snowden & Smith were massive losses, and call Mullen what you like, but the step down to Dobson is like falling off a cliff. I'm actually going to be a bit critical here, and a lot of you might disagree, but I didn't like Ben Hunt's two or three chip kicks. For mine, with the game won, there was no need to go for those low percentage plays. If he wants to practise them, do it at training, but in a real game, against real opponents, I'd rather they attempt plays that they will need to execute against quality opposition. Like continuing to build pressure, exercising ball control, and taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves instead of trying to pull something out of nothing.

Hunt was going for the throat IMO, but he went about it the wrong way. We weren't chasing points, there was no need for desperation football. Should have played for position and applied the blow torch.

 

[rnabokov]

No, I won't be opening the Hodges to Retire thread :)

It was awesome to see that display live. Especially compared to the last game we watched live where we pretty much went insane with how disillusioned we were. But I'm not getting carried away, the Knights were seriously depleted. Snowden & Smith were massive losses, and call Mullen what you like, but the step down to Dobson is like falling off a cliff. I'm actually going to be a bit critical here, and a lot of you might disagree, but I didn't like Ben Hunt's two or three chip kicks. For mine, with the game won, there was no need to go for those low percentage plays. If he wants to practise them, do it at training, but in a real game, against real opponents, I'd rather they attempt plays that they will need to execute against quality opposition. Like continuing to build pressure, exercising ball control, and taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves instead of trying to pull something out of nothing.

So Hodges. Hodges, Hodges, Hodges. What do I say. The man is a ****ing legend. Easily his best game of the season, and one of the top 2 or 3 of the past few years. But here's the thing - what do we do next year? If Hodges stays at fullback, we have Milford & Barba competing for one halves, and I don't want to lose either of them or have one on the bench. Yeah, it's a great problem when you have too much talent for too few positions, but it's simply not practical.

Funny, reminds me a bit of what happened when Inglis and Hayne were moved to a position where they had room to move.

Next year, anything, as long as Barba stays where he belongs: 5/8

 

[broncos4life]

I did. He said: Yabba Dabba Doo! There's Cozza with the ball and Barney, sorry, Benny, standing a metre behind me ready for the offload.

WTF has rain got to do with offloading the ball 1 metre to a player standing ready and waiting?

By that logic, why did we play a series of rather expansive backline plays?

Your logic makes no sense to me.

Slippery ball. I provided an example with the offload from cuthbo that went to barba. Slipped out of his hand and is why it went off target.

How the **** could I be clearer?

 

[Mr Fourex]

by dropping the sarcasm...??

 

[Mr Fourex]

Maybe you are correct but I still don't see the logic. I can't see how wet weather affects an offload which is a short pass. For mine, each time Parker gets the ball, he should have at least one player following him, preferably Barba or Hunt. So much can happen from an offload, especially close to their line.

We haven't seemed to have had someone like that forever.

Hoffman, Barba, Hunt .....anyone fast and wriggly should be following Parker all day.

Hopefully Milford will see the opportunity and make it pay dividends.

 

[Mr Fourex]

No, I won't be opening the Hodges to Retire thread :)

:laugh: .....he's certainly no Jack Reed !!!

 

[Morkel]

:laugh: .....he's certainly no Jack Reed !!!

Well, Jack Reed is Mr Serviceable, remember.

 

[Huge]

Time to start death riding the Storm, Eels and the Cows !!

 

[Porthoz]

Time to start death riding the Storm, Eels and the Cows !!

Not the Cows, they'll be there... but Parra and the cheats, **** yeah!

 

[Mr Fourex]

The Warriors need to fade as well ...yeah?

 

[nostradamus]

Some actual thoughts. Despite some of our tries being incredibly flukeish, there's a lot to like about this game.


Hodges was incredible. Well, other than looking shaky under the high ball.

Maranta, did he actually show some pace?

For that matter, did Reed show some pace too!?

Vidot seemed to want to make up for last week. His runs all had that extra effort in them. No errors either.

Hunt and Barba looked pretty good. Hopefully Barba gets a lot of confidence out of this match.

McGuire and Parker, what can I say? They've been immense lately. Parker was my MOTM, he must have had like 1000 runs, and it was quanity and quality the whole time. McGuire seemed to sit out most of the 2nd half though.

McCullough looked a lot sharper last night.

Glenn's runs were great too.

Thaiday had his best half of the season in the 1st.

Kennedy had his best game of the year by far.


Now, I'm not going to go completely over the top with the win. We were great, but Knights were terrible. It's not going to be this easy again, especially against the Storm in 2 weeks time. Hopefully the confidence we get from this goes a long way to help us out though.

Alec you left out your fav player Gillett ? Just wondering how you rate his game last nite?

 

[uptheguts]

I really enjoyed the win ,but I would need to see a similar effort next week to convince me we are worthy of being in the finals. I love watching Hodges play. at his creative best.There is no substitute for class. Great to see Reed do somthing worthwhile in attack (for a change). Call me a grumpy old man ,but I don't like Barba one hand put downs when scoring tries. An unnecessary risk IMO.

 

[I bleed Maroon]

I really enjoyed the win ,but I would need to see a similar effort next week to convince me we are worthy of being in the finals. I love watching Hodges play. at his creative best.There is no substitute for class. Great to see Reed do somthing worthwhile in attack (for a change). Call me a grumpy old man ,but I don't like Barba one hand put downs when scoring tries. An unnecessary risk IMO.

That is the biggest thing standing in our way, our inconsistency. If we play like we played on saturday night against both Merge and Melbourne, we will win both quite comfortably and stand as the most threatening team to finish in 8th spot in a long time

 

[Big Pete]

I didn't think last night's performance was that much better than what the Broncos put in against Souths.

Then again, I didn't think the Broncos were THAT bad against Souths.

However, the Knights were awful on Saturday. They couldn't build any pressure and while their defence was committed for the most part, they didn't give themselves enough opportunities to really test the Broncos out like say Souths did.

Still, it's a nice win to add to the record book and the guys who have been coming up with good plays week in, week out with very little to show for it got a chance to finally step into the spotlight.

Broncos have a lot to work on and I don't think they have enough time to work on it but I hope that last twenty minutes gave them enough confidence heading into Friday.

 

[Super Freak]

Ben Hunt looked unhappy he had to run all the way back to the other side of the field after the last try.

 

[Allo]

One thing I noticed when Kennedy got subbed off is that he sprinted off (so not really tired) and did not look happy about getting pulled off the field. Typical Hook bench fail. Glad he got another stint and proved it worthwhile with his pass for the kick-off return try. Also Wallace got nothing til the game was iced and got maybe 10-15 minutes (not sure if he finished the game on the field). If you can't trust him in the previous 65-70 minutes, why pick him?

 

[Huge]

I really enjoyed the win ,but I would need to see a similar effort next week to convince me we are worthy of being in the finals. I love watching Hodges play. at his creative best.There is no substitute for class. Great to see Reed do somthing worthwhile in attack (for a change). Call me a grumpy old man ,but I don't like Barba one hand put downs when scoring tries. An unnecessary risk IMO.

Your last two lines are so on the money ! I kept pointing that out to my buddy while we watched the game, it absolutely shits me and you can bet Bennett saw it as well. We cannot be the only two ! I kept saying how much better it was seeing blokes hit the ground with the ball safely tucked by their side.

 

[rnabokov]

Slippery ball. I provided an example with the offload from cuthbo that went to barba. Slipped out of his hand and is why it went off target.

How the **** could I be clearer?

Well, you could start by watching what really happened.

Slipped out of his hand? Really?

Looked to me like Cuthbo deliberately passed the ball to a support runner who over ran the ball. Nothing to do with the conditions. Just bad luck and bad timing.