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Round 2: BULLDOGS vs TITANS (2025)

On Reeds charge down first set, he's left at least a second before Verrills has touched the ball off the ptb right in front of the ref.. Lofi wouldn't have been able to charge it down if he was onside....
 
Des has always coached creativity out of his hookers and forced them to be boring tacklebot / distributors. If you watched Verrills at the Roosters, he was more creative than what we see now.
 
Not much to say. Still the same brain dead team when it comes to the crunch. Overall Some good. Some shit. As I said the zero expectation season and on paper was a hard game away but was winnable but let down by the same players doing the same things. Onto next week
 
That ridiculously chaotic start to the game looked to be premeditated and it rocked our stability imo. Once we got into the grind we held our own. I blame Des for that and also for whatever he said at halftime to change our momentum. We will make stupid decisions but generally we didn’t throw in the towel.
 
It's a valid point RCG and Mo and Joliffe underperforming doesn't help

Hopefully they can get it together and Pahulu may help

I think we need a hooker or lock or both who offers something in attack because we don't have either, we haven't had either in a long time and it leads to fewer team tries with multiple touches and more predictability

Kelly is never going to be an above average starting centre. I would go as far as to say he has had 0 seasons as a Titan where he has been in the top 50% of starting centres in the comp. At this point he is never going to. Yes, he has some moments but it's also fair to say he is one of the worst long term starting centres in the NRL, he isn't going to get any better at 28 and we need someone else in that slot soon he's been with us for what this is his sixth season and he hasn't put together a single season where you could say he was clearly above average as a starter

Sami offers so little in attack too these days. He had a period where he looked like he was going to break out a few years and then just didn't. He's 27, he's not going to get any better either. Sami has at least had seasons where he was above average in his position, granted that was before he switched to centre out of necessity.

We all know Jojo is going to be an elite winger or centre eventually, Lofi is in attack but is bad on the other side of the ball so remains to be seen but he's young enough to improve and i'm happy for them to keep their spots for now but we need new centres badly, presumably it's Gordon short term (maybe long term depending whether he ends up in the halves) and Stephenson long term but i'm lost for how we deal with it this season, maybe carry on with Sami and Gordon I guess once he's healthy

Mozer will offer more in his prime than any hooker we've ever had at the club, or certainly in the past decade. You buy him while the price is reasonable and the club he's at can't afford to pay him and try and fix his defence if it's an issue. It's not like Verrills is a particularly elite defensive hooker anyway. You don't win a premiership without taking some risks and signing Reagan Campbell Gillards and Isaac Lius after their primes is not the sort of move that is going to win us a comp - we should develop local juniors and buy players with high upside and hope it works out. Carter Gordon is a perfect example of a good buy, someone who will be a superstar if it works and a bust if it doesn't but we are not contending now, we still have a window of about 5 years where the core of our squad are still in their primes and a few players (Stephenson, Harrison, Gordon etc) who will be in their primes if they work out, so recruit around the best case scenario - that means getting rid of Mo as he ages out of his prime, retaining Pahulu if we can or recruiting a similar player if we can't, getting rid of Joliffe and other serially average forwards.

Fifita and Fermor i'd say are TBD and we'll see how they go this year. Alick is fine as cheap backup depth, Klese I have no idea why we extended him forever if he couldn't bring Payne with him, I have never seen whatever everyone sees in him and think he is average when he's playing normally and horrendous when he's playing badly. I haven't seen enough of Hau to really know there but hope he delivers, i've seen a lot more Burleigh and Tweed QCup games than Jets games so just haven't seen enough of him yet to have an opinion

But it's so disappointing to feel like we're 1-2 years away from being good every year then it just doesn't work

In theory if Harrison and Gordon become origin level players and Stephenson an origin level centre in a couple years, we retain Pahulu, sign Mozer and he hits his potential and we recruit or develop 1-2 more forwards we are suddenly a top 4 side. A lot needs a lot to go right though for that to happen.

Honestly first things first we have to fix our centres and the underperforming middle forwards. Hooker and lock need fixing too but i'm not sure we have a solution for that this season with our roster.

I think there is a good chance Des is washed as a first grade coach and is actually a step back from Holbrook but we'll see over the rest of the season. I don't know what the solution is there or whether Cam Smith could be coaxed out of retirement at some stage for a head coaching role but he does live here...
 
It's round 1, Our forwards were shocking, We had errors that cost us from basically the same players as always like Moe/Lofi and we still somehow were competing for a while and about 4 of their tries came off our own shitness.

I'd take quite a few 9s before Mozer who I think is pretty overhyped right now personally, He's got some creativity and might end up great in years which is fine but acting like his generational or someone to change our fortunes seems a bit overboard, It's also probably our deepest position in the juniors right now and Billish will be ready in 2/3 and already signed for 4 years. I also straight up doubt we're even after him.

Sami had our most run metres and does a lot of dirty work and same with BK, Everyone agrees that he's rocks and diamonds but it's not like there's some abundance of great centres out there to bring in.

After the 20th minute we won :LOL: and we were shocking still for the most part, 1st game of the season and Moe costing us about 3 tries and Lofi a couple.
 
First look at the new Jersey for a game, I would prefer a different design, however looked better on tv than I thought it would.
 
GC Giant said:
First look at the new Jersey for a game, I would prefer a different design, however looked better on tv than I thought it would.
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I thought it was very confusing playing another blue and white coloured team (inverted). Must have been hard sometimes for the players.

This is my watching the game with my daughter.


But at fulltime I'm a little bit more optimistic. It was a tough assignment. It was a winnable game. We helped the Dogs so much with our own buffoonery. I was really impressed with Brock. Tino tried all game. AJ looked keen when he appeared. KK was quiet by his own highstandards, but didn't shy away. I want to see more kick pressure. I want to see better service from dummy half.

Onto next week against the Knights. And old mate Ponga is in terrifying form. But than god we are at one. I hope our fans get behind the team.
 
www.nrl.com

NRL Casualty Ward: Knee injuries for Bulldogs duo; Khan-Pereira strains calf

Bulldogs duo Matt Burton and Viliame Kikau have suffered knee injuries in their side's win over the Titans, while Panthers fullback Dylan Edwards is set for a stint on the sidelines.
www.nrl.com www.nrl.com

The Titans did not escape the match unscathed either, with coach Des Hasler revealing fullback Alofiana Khan-Pereira suffered a calf strain. The flier will be sent for scans to determine the severity of the injury.
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Watching a replay of the Suns.
Don’t have much to say.

The NswRL Ref as always hurt us badly as did the usual suspects with dumb errors.

We look to me to be almost exactly the same team as last year.

Flair, dumb and not an 80mins team.

Nonetheless bring on Newcastle next Saturday because despite our failings I saw enough to suggest we can beat anyone on our day this season.
 
I'm feeling what you're all feeling, maybe worse. I deadset expected a lot better but understand why some guys didn't aim up. We can't accept that performance.

I saw Lofi jam in to get nobody (most likely BK's fault) but then jog slowly towards the Dogs players looking like scoring. This is my pet Lofi hate. It tells me he doesn't care about the other team scoring. I can't abide that. If Francis had brained the trials, he would be there next week. I'm not sure we can do worse until Lofi improves his basics.

The rest of the backs have a reason to be outplayed - our forwards were terrible. In saying that, the Jojo try off the back of a Kini kick receipt was champagne rugby league. Kini will just get better. Jojo too. Phil wasn't terrible (but I'm still watching you Phil). The halves are new and will take some time to gel, especially behind beaten forwards. I can't judge them at all after that. BK has to go as soon as we have a replacement.

Tino and RCG will be better for the run, as mentioned. Randy is a better lock than Tino but we knew that before kick off. I think we were just trying to soften them up before we brought him on. I want to see some run threat from Randy though. Verrills was less than ordinary. I'd rather Randy at 9 if Verrills is going to dish up ball like that. Moe has to lift and fast. JJ seems to have lost what he had early last year and the year before. I hope he finds it quickly. Beau got found out again on his lateral movement. Klese was a nothing. DF on too late and too little. But BROCK GRAY has selected himself to start for as long as he plays like that. Love him! Breath of fresh air. Alick is hard done by, having to watch that from home when he would have been better than half the pack. Pahulu should make a difference.

Possibly our biggest crime though was Des' rotations. RCG was cooked and stayed on for another 5-10. Tino and Moe should have also come off earlier. Randy, DF and Gray Cement should have been used earlier. Also, way too much like the team we hate to be than the team we want to be. Insufficient progress, Des.
 
Most on here won’t know this but every game our international broadcaster watchnrl.com has ads promoting Auskick and other kick & giggle stuff. I’m tired of writing to the NRL about it. If you like that sport then fine but I think it’s ridiculous to show on our international stage a sport whose international alliance is curling, or was that hurling.

I don’t think Kini recovered from that blatant shoulder charge early on.
 
Am I an idiot for not seeing what Verrills did wrong and the halves who were somehow being blamed? He had a couple of moments he'd like back but so would nearly every single person in the team.... JC was also kicking us out of trouble on bad sets, Just our chase and contact was horrible.

Their points nearly all came down to errors or defusing bombs/kicks in our half, Bulldogs caught all there's or got the rebound from Jojo and we had 2 drops from Lofi leading to tries. If they made an error we made one the set after early, If we got a penalty we coughed it up, Compared to their errors which were mostly down our end which hurt much less.

It's much more an individual problem then a system one imo, The issue is the individuals are Moe and Dave who should be peaking, Lofi is great but his errors nearly always end in tries because they are in our end. We were earning field possession and would lose it and then gave them every opportunity in that first 20 and they grabbed it. It wasn't even Burtons kicks Lofi was dropping either.

Edit: Verrills did have some shitty passes.... I love my Randy but he has that in him as well tbf.
 
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Titanic said:
Most on here won’t know this but every game our international broadcaster watchnrl.com has ads promoting Auskick and other kick & giggle stuff. I’m tired of writing to the NRL about it. If you like that sport then fine but I think it’s ridiculous to show on our international stage a sport whose international alliance is curling, or was that hurling.

I don’t think Kini recovered from that blatant shoulder charge early on.
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Do you mean the tone deaf NAB ads?

You know when I get charged by WatchNRL I’m actually billed from WatchAFL !
 
1st try, Reed offside by a mile in front of the ref + shoulder charge from Montoya, You'd hope they'd hold them out and they got kind of close but it's tough and Kikau is one of the best/created from what I remember that out the back play and Jojo overcommitted to Xerri and Sami was a touch late on Kikau but they nearly stopped it.

2nd try, Kini gets the 20m restart and Lofi cops the 50/50 and Moe overdoes it and Preston cruises through, Tino could have been closer which happened a couple of times but he'll get there.

3rd, Everyone kind of does as good of a job on Kikau as much as possible but he gets the offload which happens..... Moe is being lazy but Fermor is the worst, He's holding up the line trying to organizeway over left while Tino, Verrills and RCG are to the left of him and then realizes there was an offload and Burton cooks him.....

4th BK has the error 1st tackle on a hit up off our 20 and Curran gets carried over like he's at a funeral or something and laid down to score.....

Tino was also in the area where there was tries a couple of times but he was incredible of an ACL and it's on the others to be doing more and I trust him to be fine, It was more timing/flow with him and not being used to it. If AJ isn't dumb and puts it down not desperately who knows but every time we had decent field possession we gave it up.

We got in the grind after that and did OK even while still making errors in poor spots, Yes they capitalized which I'd hope we could hold out but that's how the NRL is now, Those mistakes/errors are cost us more then systems or anything else when everyone basically can attack well in the modern NRL.. There's barely any good defensive centres out there... 80% of fanbases don't like their centre pairings.

Which goes to Bret White, I'm neutral as anything on him or leaning to get rid off but for who and why? Like Birdman said, It's a personal problem isn't it? We've got Fermor and Dave in two of the most important positions for defending and neither of them are even average maybe. JC looks already like one of better defenders in reading and hitting and our centre/wingers have look more connected which is a big difference to last year.

What can Brett actually do with these guys who just make poor or lazy decisions??? That's got to be on Des to make the call or lower all their minutes and actually play the better defenders more? Our edges defended pretty well imo for what they could do, It was just really poor middle defence.

The issue to me is with Des not seeming to see all these players for what they are or thinking they'll come good after seeing them for a year. He kind of fixed the Dave issue but Moe is becoming a bigger one then he was.

Lofi still can't win a tackle (Most of those tb's came off the two tries I think)....... He's worth persisting cause he's a freak with the speed but he can't win a tackle coming out of our end but has gotten better, His errors end up as being more harmful to the team, I think he's been the highest error maker in the comp on average for a back every year and barely any of them are "good" errors, They are nearly always in our backfield off kicks or hit ups and it's brutal.
 
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