Wallace has to go

[noisetheory]

thing is he looks like he could take the next step, so its a bit disappointing that it hasnt really happened yet. having said that, he is still only 22. the penny will probably drop for him over the next 12 to 24 months.

EDIT ha,^ beads said a very similar thing to what i was trying to get at

 

[Bucking Beads]

He still is very young but he has played 95 games I think so he is pretty experienced.

 

[Big Pete]

I remember when Macca tried emulating Smithy, it worked wonders last year. :001_tt2:

I can see why some expect better. Kid's been talked up as a future captain since he practically debuted, is always brought up when the Broncos are doing well as commentators try and claim they were on his bandwagon before he meant anything & our greatest player (Lockyer, not Denan Kemp) always talks him up as well.

Yet every so often he's still coming up with coach killing fifth tackle plays that have really hurt us in the past. A lot of people single Gillett & Parker out for that game against Manly, but Macca's dumb grubber to Watmough is what changed the course of the game & it's not a one off either.

I still think Macca has the ability to become a very good player and I'm not kidding myself, I know it takes hookers awhile for them to come into their own but I would like to see more.

And with saying that, I'd love to see him play the full 80. We seem to lose a lot of our composure offensively and defensively when he goes off.

 

[Alec]

With only 5 rounds to the finals it is IMO just too big of a call to drop one of your halves now. It just doesn't leave enough time to rebuild confidence. If anyone goes it's Norman, however I'm very reluctant to make changes until we have our full strength team back on the park. I think you'll see a marked improvement then.

2006. 4 rounds to go in the regular season. We made a drastic change with the fullback and the hooker. What happened next?

 

[Big Pete]

I don't think we have the likes of an 06 Hodges or Berro to call in. That was a gutsy move & a bit of a masterstroke from Bennett. In hindsight, it doesn't take a genius to shift your most lethal players into positions where they'd get their hands on the ball more often but hiding their flaws and making it work in the biggest game was telling.

Wayne never gets enough respect for that, it always gets trivialised to 'the refs won us the game'. By that logic, they screwed us of a premiership from 01-03 & 05 but of course you never hear about it when the Broncos get screwed outside of us fans.

With our current squad, if we were doing the 06 scramble it'd probably look like...

1. Gerard Beale
2. Josh Hoffman
3. Jack Reed
4. Justin Hodges
5. Dale Copley
6. Andrew McCullough
7. Ben Hunt
8. Ben Hannant
9. Kurt Baptiste
10. Josh McGuire
11. Alex Glenn
12. Ben Te'o
13. Corey Parker (c)

14. Peter Wallace
15. Sam Thaiday
16. Petero Civoniceiva
17. Matt Gillett

Could even drop Reed and shift Copley into centre with Maranta on the wing.

I'm not saying Hook should run with that side, but it'd be pretty fun to watch especially if it paid off.

 

[gUt]

Maybe I'm a pollyanna but it seems that people are spinning off into the ether with some pretty novel but overwrought ideas to fix a simple problem: we've got too many injuries and we're too tired from State of Origin.

Obviously moving backrowers into the centres should be avoided if possible but the talk of shuffling the team just seems like overkill to me. The team needs to get its top side back on the park and playing the shapes and structures that had everyone penciling us in as top 4 certainties ("OMGEURD I CAN'T BELEAUVE HEAUW WELL THEY'RE GEURING WITHOUT LOCKYEEEAAAUR!!!") before the season killer that is Origin came along and ****ed us hard without lube.

 

[Anonymous person]

I don't think we have the likes of an 06 Hodges or Berro to call in. That was a gutsy move & a bit of a masterstroke from Bennett. In hindsight, it doesn't take a genius to shift your most lethal players into positions where they'd get their hands on the ball more often but hiding their flaws and making it work in the biggest game was telling.

Wayne never gets enough respect for that, it always gets trivialised to 'the refs won us the game'. By that logic, they screwed us of a premiership from 01-03 & 05 but of course you never hear about it when the Broncos get screwed outside of us fans.

i think some people over exaggerate how much of a 'masterstroke' it was.

Hodges always considered himself a fullback. the whole reason he left the broncos was because he thought he would get to play fullback at the *roosters* (lolz my bad), but that never eventuated. so in his second year back with us, when our fullback is out for like 6 weeks (iirc), it hardly takes a genius to put one of the best players in the game on his day into his preferred position. i mean it was either Hodges or Boyd, who was a rookie.

it wasnt a masterstroke, it was common sense - and basically the only option.

 

[Coxy]

i think some people over exaggerate how much of a 'masterstroke' it was.

Hodges always considered himself a fullback. the whole reason he left the broncos was because he thought he would get to play fullback at the bulldogs, but that never eventuated.

Well that would've been very hard given he went to the Roosters...shows how dumb he is! :P

 

[Anonymous person]

Well that would've been very hard given he went to the Roosters...shows how dumb he is! :P

well he doesnt sound like the sharpest tool in the shed lol. my bad XD

 

[Big Pete]

The common sense option would have been to put Karmichael Hunt back in at fullback when he returned, especially when it became apparent of Hodges' flaws at the back. He persisted and chose the right times to put him at the back.

Throw in his decision to put Berro to hooker, freakin' Stagg to centres, Perry > the much more promising Seymour & promote Thaiday and he deserves a ton of credit for that 06 turn around.

Don't even know why you bothered responding to that. Hit too close to home?

 

[Dexter]

Wait while I get some popcorn.

 

[Big Pete]

Nah, that's the end of the 06 discussion as far as I'm concerned.

Sorry folks for dragging things a tad off-topic.

Back on, it appears the chances of Hunt getting a starting spot are slim to none this weekend. Looks like we'll have to grin and bear another performance. We said this after the Sharks game, but surely Wallace can't play any worse.

 

[Anonymous person]

The common sense option would have been to put Karmichael Hunt back in at fullback when he returned, especially when it became apparent of Hodges' flaws at the back. He persisted and chose the right times to put him at the back.

Throw in his decision to put Berro to hooker, freakin' Stagg to centres, Perry > the much more promising Seymour & promote Thaiday and he deserves a ton of credit for that 06 turn around.

Don't even know why you bothered responding to that. Hit too close to home?

why put Hunt back to fullback when Hodges was playing well? should Souths have moved Inglis back to centre to accomodate their injured fullback when he came back, just because he came back?

"He persisted and chose the right times to put him at the back."

correct me if im wrong, but didnt hodges play every game from when Hunt got injured til the end of the season at fullback apart from a single half of 1 match (the semi against the bulldogs)? if you were the coach, and your team had been playing excellent with your new fullback playing the house down for 8 weeks, then you switch fullbacks for 40 minutes and get destroyed in that 40 minutes, wouldnt you think to change the one thing that had changed from when you were playing well back to how it was? i know i would. in reality, it was a dumb move putting hunt back there when hodges had been playing the way he had.

Stagg to centre wasnt a good decision, he was terrible there. perry over seymour was because Bennett didnt like seymour and he loved perry, not some masterstroke on his behalf. like players like kelly or minto, it didnt matter how poorly perry played week in week out, he wasnt getting dropped because bennett liked him. much like bennett didnt like taylor and would just give him a game or 2 every few months, thats how he treated seymour.


i responded because its in the topic.....why cant i respond? if you dont want people to respond, why did you write it? "hit too close to home"? what do you mean? we both support the same team, and it was clear as day to a non-biased person that it wasnt a masterstroke on bennetts behalf - like i said, it was either Hodges or a ~15 game rookie in Boyd. a masterstroke wouldve been moving thaiday to fullback and him playing the house down as a fullback. putting a great player (on his few and far between days) into his preferred position because you have noone else to put in there anyway is not a masterstroke.

 

[Big Pete]

I would have thought, after the number of threads that have been locked because of how you can't let one positive Bennett post lie you would have had the common sense not to drag an entire thread down to another argument that's been done at least 42 times on here.

You had a right to reply to the post you've just quoted and I'd be happy to discuss this with you via PM or any other Bennett topic that could be bumped, but not here, not now.

 

[Anonymous person]

I would have thought, after the number of threads that have been locked because of how you can't let one positive Bennett post lie

takes two to tango.

what you said - Bennett moving Hodges to Fullback was a "masterstroke of coaching" - was an extremely subjective, and pretty easily disproven comment. being the Bennett-knocker that I am, of course I will pull you up on it. Now nothing i have said should get the topic locked, and was on topic with how the thread had naturally progressed.

i'm happy to leave it be, ive said my part and i know youre not going to ever agree no matter what i say or what evidence i put forward supporting it.

so back on topic - not happy to see our lineup remaining basically "as is" for this week.

 

[Browny]

Can't believe we named the same team. But this week half the forward pack are gobbing off about aiming up blah blah blah.

Not expecting much this week

 

[Big Pete]

What side would you guys like to see then?

I don't say that defensively either, just curious.

 

[Dexter]

I'd like to see Beale in the centres Whitchurch on the wing Glenn or Teo back in the pack and when Hunt comes on put him in the halves. If we are going badly again and Hook just leaves everything the same then we can resign ourselves that nothing will change for the rest of the year barring some returns.

By that time it could be to late for a top 4 spot and with the run we have the 3 games after this one we may end up missing the semis. We will be relying on results going our way, not that they haven't already.