What a great win over the Panthers. We shocked them early and were able to control the game through some great attack. We pushed up to ninth with only some soft tries topping us from being in the 8.
What a game by GI at fullback. In a surprise move worked wonders and had the league world looking at how good GI maybe at fullback. Lets hope he can continue.
Congratulations to our U18 GB Ball team who this week also qualify for the semi finals with a good win over the Central Coast, mid week.
I am not a fan of the proposed draft as players who want to play for their district will be forced out. But there a few items that need futher review.
Players transfering so early in the season
Clubs signing hundreds of juniors to contracts. Just to stop them going to other clubs
Salary Cap like or hate is actually working to balance rosters. Whether it should $ based or points based is another discussion. But there is a problem that it is only for FG and U20's We need to see two factors working together. That is a Salary Cap for all tiers for NRL clubs and two a limit # of players who can registered in a season at each level.
FG $5 mil - 32 players RG $1 mil - 25 players U20 $500K - 25 players U18 $200K - 25 players U16 $100K - 25 players
With this there is of course National Resreve Grade as well and Salary Cap concession for juniors starting with players playing 5 years in their district.
Any players who cannot make these tiers can go and play NSW/QLD/NZ Cup - where there is a $750K Salary Cap for their top 25 for this tier to make sure talent is spread around
The next issue is players signing mid season. Like it or not but the June 30 deadline did work. In combant clubs should have right of reply on a players contract situation right up til the last day, as the last contract is the one registered with the NRL.
BUT I would prefer June 30 date to be Aug 15. And there still needs to be a May 1 to May 30 in season transfer window for players, thus allowing RG players to swap clubs to address injury concerns.A great first half performance by the team set the platform for the win, with no errors and a great effective 1st tackle. However the team made only made a poor 1058m and handling errors were up at 11, but missed tackles down to 25. Effective 1st tackles dropped toslightly this week to 32.1m. Whileour first half was graet our second half was ordinary with all of the 11 handling errors and a effective 1st tackel of 48m.
Sam Burgess lead the way on the weekend with 7 missed tackles due to a shoulder injury, while errors by King lead directly to two tries. Looking at our left side defence - Farrell-Corrigan-Sutton-Taylor (2-0-0-0) 2 missed tackles between them. On the right side Everingham-King-Reynolds-Burgess (0-1-0-7) went down to 8 missed tackles between them. Our forwards did not provide enough go forward with only Luke making more than 100m in the match.
On the positive side we had strong running games from Luke making more than 142m and his go forwardwas a important turning point in the game. Defensively Crocker and Burgess our leading tacklers with Geddes and Taylor not missing a tackle.