Coastalraider wrote:Which was one of my main concerns with signing 3 middle of the road hookers above Trev - a complete block on development. It will take injury or suspension for him to play decent minutes.
Can't play til round 10 anyway, probably not deeming it a priority until then
Hooker has to be the number 1 priority for the club moving forward
It’s going to be important that with a Sanders-Strange-Stewart plan they are paired with a competent hooker who can take some pressure off
We’ve got young kids but we need a bridge option. The current options aren’t good enough and it was folly to think they would be
Well, quite frankly, Woolford should be in the A-Grade hooking rotation with Levi and Trev should be getting serious minutes in NSW Cup with Starling spelling him for 20min or so, so his non-minutes are entirely on the coach for his continual baffling hooker selections.
Coastalraider wrote:Which was one of my main concerns with signing 3 middle of the road hookers above Trev - a complete block on development. It will take injury or suspension for him to play decent minutes.
Can't play til round 10 anyway, probably not deeming it a priority until then
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I’m pretty sure the round 10 development player rule was scratched for this year.
Coastalraider wrote:Which was one of my main concerns with signing 3 middle of the road hookers above Trev - a complete block on development. It will take injury or suspension for him to play decent minutes.
Can't play til round 10 anyway, probably not deeming it a priority until then
Sent from my Pixel 7 using Tapatalk
I’m pretty sure the round 10 development player rule was scratched for this year.
We have two perfectly good 9s on the books playing cup and playing like 9s. The trouble is we have two 14s playing first grade and they are playing like 14s. So we already have a nine and a fourteen for first grade and a 9 and a 14 for cup. Sorted. Someone just has to convince Ricky to play one of the 9s in first grade. But...if they LOOK like an 'effort' player talent doesn't matter. The 'effort' players get slotted in.
Coastalraider wrote:Which was one of my main concerns with signing 3 middle of the road hookers above Trev - a complete block on development. It will take injury or suspension for him to play decent minutes.
Can't play til round 10 anyway, probably not deeming it a priority until then
Sent from my Pixel 7 using Tapatalk
I’m pretty sure the round 10 development player rule was scratched for this year.
greeneyed wrote: ↑April 22, 2024, 11:46 am
We’ve got the most promising junior hooker in the country on contract.
Who's that?
Xavier Cacciotti was the Australian Schoolboys hooker last year. And he’s not the only very good junior hooker on the books. I can’t remember a better crop of dummy halves coming through the club. If the Raiders cannot convert one of them into a top line line first grade hooker, it’d be disappointing.
So we are going to have 2 x Xaviers and 2 x Ethans.
Please tell me there is another Chevy coming through.
Tyran Wishart at Melbourne and Sandon Smith at the Roosters. I think we should be making enquiries. The paths to first grade are blocked for these guys. Halfbacks who can play hooker are the way to go IMO. Talyn Da Silva is another guy at Wests.
We are no doubt having a loom at the clubs with gun number 9's. We've been quite successful recruiting guys looking for an opportunity. I hope we can do the same here.
Coastalraider wrote:Which was one of my main concerns with signing 3 middle of the road hookers above Trev - a complete block on development. It will take injury or suspension for him to play decent minutes.
Can't play til round 10 anyway, probably not deeming it a priority until then
Sent from my Pixel 7 using Tapatalk
I’m pretty sure the round 10 development player rule was scratched for this year.
Yep, GE changed the rule over the off season.
Well if he's just changing things willy nilly, perhaps he could change the rules to allow mike to award 7 points!
Ray170 wrote: ↑April 22, 2024, 5:08 pm
We have two perfectly good 9s on the books playing cup and playing like 9s. The trouble is we have two 14s playing first grade and they are playing like 14s. So we already have a nine and a fourteen for first grade and a 9 and a 14 for cup. Sorted. Someone just has to convince Ricky to play one of the 9s in first grade. But...if they LOOK like an 'effort' player talent doesn't matter. The 'effort' players get slotted in.
This is how I feel. I felt like this in the preseason but tried hard to get on the Levi-Starling train and, up until the weekend, I’d almost convinced myself we could do okay with it. But that’s over.
Woolford is mid but his service and decisions are so much better than Levi and Starling it’s not funny. Trev has the highest ceiling by some distance but he needs to string a lot more games together before we hitch our fortunes to him.
Puru could be (part of) the solution but I’m not as sold on his hooker ability as others.
It was thrown around somewhere that we were going to see how we went for the first six rounds then reconsider our team. The first six rounds (except the Knights) were all against bottom 8 teams. I'd expect things will get a bit messy from here on in.
Ray170 wrote: ↑April 22, 2024, 10:43 pm
It was thrown around somewhere that we were going to see how we went for the first six rounds then reconsider our team. The first six rounds (except the Knights) were all against bottom 8 teams. I'd expect things will get a bit messy from here on in.
I don’t think the Sharks, Warriors, Broncos should be considered “bottom 8 teams” and Knights definitely are this year, albeit 7 rounds in.
Maybe late in the year. He isn’t playing Flegg yet with Packer and Pattie ahead of him but they seem to maybe prefer stability over playing players up a grade this year.
Coastalraider wrote:Which was one of my main concerns with signing 3 middle of the road hookers above Trev - a complete block on development. It will take injury or suspension for him to play decent minutes.
Can't play til round 10 anyway, probably not deeming it a priority until then
Sent from my Pixel 7 using Tapatalk
I’m pretty sure the round 10 development player rule was scratched for this year.
Yep, GE changed the rule over the off season.
Well if he's just changing things willy nilly, perhaps he could change the rules to allow mike to award 7 points!
I doubt it, he only just changed the rules to stop mike having 7 points, doubt he’d flip flop this quickly
Ray170 wrote: ↑April 22, 2024, 10:43 pm
It was thrown around somewhere that we were going to see how we went for the first six rounds then reconsider our team. The first six rounds (except the Knights) were all against bottom 8 teams. I'd expect things will get a bit messy from here on in.
I don’t think the Sharks, Warriors, Broncos should be considered “bottom 8 teams” and Knights definitely are this year, albeit 7 rounds in.
And we lost to all three of those teams, so Ray’s point still stands.
BJ wrote: ↑April 23, 2024, 9:38 am
I’m on the record as wanting a Woolford Levi hooking combo at NRL level, but I do feel Woolford has dropped off a bit in the last few weeks.
Yeah, I've been on the same record for a long time now.
BJ wrote: ↑April 23, 2024, 9:38 am
I’m on the record as wanting a Woolford Levi hooking combo at NRL level, but I do feel Woolford has dropped off a bit in the last few weeks.
Bluesbrother wrote:Woolford sucks. So did his father - I can't believe he ever captained the club. Says a lot about how poor the club was being run through those dark days.
Honestly can't believe he is being thrown up as a suggestion to come in. Levi has been going well. We definitely need an upgrade though, I wholeheartedly agree. Youth is the best and most likely route we should/could take to have success in this area.
Should have kept Luke Priddis, another very poor decision of the time, along with letting Kennedy go and picking Elliot over Bellamy, think about that
Bluesbrother wrote:Woolford sucks. So did his father - I can't believe he ever captained the club. Says a lot about how poor the club was being run through those dark days.
Honestly can't believe he is being thrown up as a suggestion to come in. Levi has been going well. We definitely need an upgrade though, I wholeheartedly agree. Youth is the best and most likely route we should/could take to have success in this area.
Should have kept Luke Priddis, another very poor decision of the time, along with letting Kennedy go and picking Elliot over Bellamy, think about that
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we didn't let kennedy go - kennedy left the club on bad terms after an off-field incident. he also allegedly agreed to terms with the knights before the anti-tampering deadline had passed. he was leaving whether we wanted him to or not.
i keep seeing people bring up the picking elliot over bellamy thing, which is easy to do via hindsight. at the time bellamy was completely unproven and elliot had just won a comp with bradford bulls. if that exact scenario was played out today and we picked bellamy the people that bring this up would be the same people bemoaning the fact we chose someone from the "old boys club" instead of going with a fresh faced outsider.
The Nickman wrote:Also, Elliott had a pretty shmick PowerPoint presentation and I'm told on good authority his bowtie spun around.
Needs more second rowers
Gina Riley: Oh, come on, John. That’s a bit old hat, the corrupt IOC delegate. John Clarke: Old hat? Gina, in the scientific world when they see that something is happening again and again and again, repeatedly, they don’t call it old hat. They call it a pattern.
