NRL 2018

@mariner4life said in NRL 2018:

@raznomore said in NRL 2018:

It'll be interesting to see how they handle poor calls and poor play. It's always easier to stay positive when your are playing well and the 50/50 calls go your way.

That penalty count is concerning.

A couple of Blair's were soooo fucking dumb. And that's not a surprise to anyone. I just can't fathom why they bought him. Yes the pack needed some experience, but why bring a guy with his level of "discipline" to a team that needs to improve in that area?

Did you see that penalty when he locked his legs around the guy he had just tackled? It looked like he was going for an MMA submission!

Was a superb Kiwis captain as well.

@mariner4life There was a brief time under Craig Bellamy where he looked the goods and then its been all down hill from there.

I'm hoping that Blair thinks this tough guy approach is needed as we get momentum moving in 2018. We've already seen evidence that we can mix it up, so pursuing the niggle isn't a strategy we need to adopt. I guess the coaches would consider there is a time and place for it - but we need to shake our rep as a team that gives away easy penalties. Combined with our shithouse defense last year that stuck the knife in us over and over (and over and over etc).

I think we may have finally tipped the balance with enough focused and talented new guys (new this year or last) to really smash that shitty culture we showing. Match that up with a squad that is clearly fit and watch out!!

@paekakboyz Michael Ennis was hinting that every pack needs a Blair type last night on one of the half million Fox league shows.

@nepia ahh, fair call - I think it's an important part of the game to be able to unsettle your opponents,. Difference is that Blair's approach is crude and easy to spot. More in the vein of thuggery than crafty niggle... although Ennis is the number one grub without a doubt.

@paekakboyz said in NRL 2018:

I'm hoping that Blair thinks this tough guy approach is needed as we get momentum moving in 2018. We've already seen evidence that we can mix it up, so pursuing the niggle isn't a strategy we need to adopt. I guess the coaches would consider there is a time and place for it - but we need to shake our rep as a team that gives away easy penalties. Combined with our shithouse defense last year that stuck the knife in us over and over (and over and over etc).

I think we may have finally tipped the balance with enough focused and talented new guys (new this year or last) to really smash that shitty culture we showing. Match that up with a squad that is clearly fit and watch out!!

holy shit. One game in and you're swallowing the lure hard out! I am reserving judgement until 3 games after Origin

@mariner4life ha ha fuck I don't have time to hold off on judgement (best delivered on little info and far too hastily :-)) till that deep in the season. The only concession the warriors have won from me is that I'll watch the next game live, rather than rec and delete, or fast forward viewing.

The mere fact they are fit and apparently engaged is enough for me.

Fish on!!

edit - as in, I'm on the hook, rather than you jogging on

@paekakboyz fair enough. I'll take two points any day of the week. I'm tempered by the fact the Bunnies are shit. And we still gave up dumb penalties at dumb times. And that flat fast track suited us.

But it was in Perth!! and round 1!! this is unheard of!!

@paekakboyz said in NRL 2018:

But it was in Perth!! and round 1!! this is unheard of!!

Oath! I reckon they are a lock for a top 8, probably with a home semi!

@hooroo Time to start organising the parade....

Just remember , it’s round 1

@kiwiinmelb don't kill our buzz bro! We've got all week to get our hopes up!

As expected, Warriors name the same lineup for their home game against the Gold Coast Titans:

1 ROGER TUIVASA-SHECK (c)
2 DAVID FUSITU’A
3 PETA HIKU
4 SOLOMONE KATA
5 KEN MAUMALO
6 BLAKE GREEN
7 SHAUN JOHNSON
8 JAMES GAVET
9 ISSAC LUKE
10 ADAM BLAIR
11 ISAIAH PAPALI’I
12 TOHU HARRIS
13 LIGI SAO
Interchange
14 SAM COOK
15 LEIVAHA PULU
16 SAM LISONE
17 BUNTY AFOA

Just can't get excited about a team that contains the names Kata & Maumalo

But... if we are only down to two poor selections that's a win imo! When is the greased up deaf guy back? Should push Kata out hopefully.

$22 million won’t buy you this turd?

It's nice to see Cronulla, and their grub collection, go 0-2 to start the year. Flanagan is such a fuckstain.

@sneakdefreak Blake Green was excellent, allowed Shaun to do his fancy stuff. Hopefully he can stay fit

Watching the NSW Prem warriors and they are rubbish. Lazy, inaccurate and poorly disciplined. The Bulldogs their playing aren't much chop either but they good enough to hammer the Warriors. CNK should has not gone looking for work which you'd think he'd be doing to get back into the top squad. Albert Vete looks average as fuck.

One of the NZ comms just suggested the bulldogs have "stolen the win". It's 8-30.

Chad Tavaga throws back to back lazy forward passes and has a nut at everyone else.

Hoping the mediocrity at the warriors stays in the lower grades.

I don't know if we'll win or lose, but so far the Warriors are looking more like the glory years Warriors than last year. Lots of ball movement, good running. Just as I write this we lose the ball early in the tackle count in the shadow of the titans' posts, they come back, and we go length of the field only to fall short ,that's the Warriors!

Two brilliant tries for the Warriors, 12-0

Titans starting to look tired , if the warriors can execute, they should put on a decent score

I don't know how good the Titans are, and we have not been perfect. But exciting warriors style footy, tough defence, very good organisation and execution. The razzle dazzle is back to Mt Smart baby!

20-8 to the warriors, first 2-0 start since 2009 . It's early but Stephen Kearney might be on to something. Harris and RTS were brilliant, Blair was everywhere and played more disciplined. Blake Green is making Shaun shine

2-0. A few teams i wouls call better than us with a worse record. Nice soft draw to open the season though.

Still the same old shit with the penalties, we give them away at the worst times, either to compound an error, or to completely undo a good piece of play.

Still, we seem to be fun to watch again, and we're winning. I'll fucking take that.

Our goalline defense was fricken awesome. Swawming them and putting in the hits when required. That was the biggest positive for me.

RTS is pure class, he would carve up in either code.

Fun game and great to see a good crowd again at Mt Smart. SJ forming a good combo with Green already bodes well.

Had a few so apologies.

There more to like than not. Seem to be getting it done while still leaving an absolute fuckload of points on the field.

Green seems to have adjusted quickly to the off load game. Johnson is a pretty player to watch when the reigns are in someone else hands. RTS is shit talker but a good leader(according to Brandy) and he did a lot of leading from the front today. Very loose with the ball at times but the defense was a thing of beauty. Penalty count was shit. Surprising not real part in that was played by Blair. But I saying that he was such a non feature I can not really remember his name mentioned.

GC are a team of left over and nobodies. They did well to keep it to 20 but I can not help but feel a better team would have made thing harder in our red zone. GC had some opportunities go against them but they weren't all that threatening really. A steam with a better offload game and a stronger bigger pack would have made made life hard for us.

Fair play to the Warriors though. They played what was in front of them and that's all you can ask of them. Some really enjoyable passages and the huddle, refocus thing is excellent. Johnson needs to sort his kicking out. 2 games in row he's been average off the tee.

Oh, well played Maumolo. Could not fault his performance. Well played that man.

Just the third time in our history that we have won our opening 2 games of a season.(assuming the Ferald is correct)

Didn’t see the game, but great result.

These are the type of games (against lesser teams) they need to keep winning if they want to be taken seriously.

2 & 0 is just crazy after getting accustomed to us being 0 & 4.

In other games when I flicked over for a look the Bunnies were up 14-6 with 10 to go and wind up losing 14-18.
Very Warriors like that is.

Was at the game and noticed a lot of people wearing brand new Warriors jerseys....

So much potential: Shame to see Isaiah Papali'i go down with a knee injury in the first 10 minutes of the game. Looks like he'll be out long-term. Leivaha Pulu came on though, played the rest of the game and was very effective with his offloading.

Breaking barriers: It's great to see the refs are using the simple eye test to determine what is or isn't obstruction. Last year there was about 25 steps in determining if a player was blocking a defender or not. This change is going to hurt a number of teams (including the Titans who had two tries called back because of obstruction) who were using the shady obstruction rules to score their points.

The real MVP: Tohu Harris was a nightmare for the Titans today. After getting a hospital pass from Shaun Johnson in the first five minutes of the game, Harris went on to terrorise the Titans edge defence. Harris > Hiku > Fusitua was too much for the Gold Coast 2, 3 and 6 that their 12 was having to come across to help out. That in turn opened lanes down the middle for guys like Lisone and Afoa. Harris also made the most tackles in the game. When Mannering returns it will probably free up Harris even more.

What about the other guys?: Gold Coast didn't have the great, mercurial (according to NRL 360) Ash Taylor. It wouldn't have mattered since although the Titans had the more possession, their edge guys, apart from maybe Konrad Hurrell, were struggling to get anything going. Even new signing Bryce Cartwright, renowned for his attacking ability, was making forward pass after forward pass.

Biggest mistake of the night: The guy shouting "Waaaarrrriiiorrrsss" from his car as he drove away from Mt Smart only to go right up the arse of another car.

Ivan Cleary is doing it again to the Storm. Score is 6-4 to Tigers with 14 minutes to go.

@sneakdefreak said in NRL 2018:

Was at the game and noticed a lot of people wearing brand new Warriors jerseys....

View image

So much potential: Shame to see Isaiah Papali'i go down with a knee injury in the first 10 minutes of the game. Looks like he'll be out long-term. Leivaha Pulu came on though, played the rest of the game and was very effective with his offloading.

Breaking barriers: It's great to see the refs are using the simple eye test to determine what is or isn't obstruction. Last year there was about 25 steps in determining if a player was blocking a defender or not. This change is going to hurt a number of teams (including the Titans who had two tries called back because of obstruction) who were using the shady obstruction rules to score their points.

The real MVP: Tohu Harris was a nightmare for the Titans today. After getting a hospital pass from Shaun Johnson in the first five minutes of the game, Harris went on to terrorise the Titans edge defence. Harris > Hiku > Fusitua was too much for the Gold Coast 2, 3 and 6 that their 12 was having to come across to help out. That in turn opened lanes down the middle for guys like Lisone and Afoa. Harris also made the most tackles in the game. When Mannering returns it will probably free up Harris even more.

What about the other guys?: Gold Coast didn't have the great, mercurial (according to NRL 360) Ash Taylor. It wouldn't have mattered since although the Titans had the more possession, their edge guys, apart from maybe Konrad Hurrell, were struggling to get anything going. Even new signing Bryce Cartwright, renowned for his attacking ability, was making forward pass after forward pass.

Biggest mistake of the night: The guy shouting "Waaaarrrriiiorrrsss" from his car as he drove away from Mt Smart only to go right up the arse of another car.

That last sentence. So good. Fuck I would have loved to see that.

@no-quarter said in NRL 2018:

Our goalline defense was fricken awesome. Swawming them and putting in the hits when required. That was the biggest positive for me.

RTS is pure class, he would carve up in either code.

Fun game and great to see a good crowd again at Mt Smart. SJ forming a good combo with Green already bodes well.

Agree on RTS, but gee he looked slow on that massive run up the middle after about 20 minutes, about 3 titans chasers all ran him down.

@mn5 said in NRL 2018:

@sneakdefreak said in NRL 2018:

Was at the game and noticed a lot of people wearing brand new Warriors jerseys....

View image

So much potential: Shame to see Isaiah Papali'i go down with a knee injury in the first 10 minutes of the game. Looks like he'll be out long-term. Leivaha Pulu came on though, played the rest of the game and was very effective with his offloading.

Breaking barriers: It's great to see the refs are using the simple eye test to determine what is or isn't obstruction. Last year there was about 25 steps in determining if a player was blocking a defender or not. This change is going to hurt a number of teams (including the Titans who had two tries called back because of obstruction) who were using the shady obstruction rules to score their points.

The real MVP: Tohu Harris was a nightmare for the Titans today. After getting a hospital pass from Shaun Johnson in the first five minutes of the game, Harris went on to terrorise the Titans edge defence. Harris > Hiku > Fusitua was too much for the Gold Coast 2, 3 and 6 that their 12 was having to come across to help out. That in turn opened lanes down the middle for guys like Lisone and Afoa. Harris also made the most tackles in the game. When Mannering returns it will probably free up Harris even more.

What about the other guys?: Gold Coast didn't have the great, mercurial (according to NRL 360) Ash Taylor. It wouldn't have mattered since although the Titans had the more possession, their edge guys, apart from maybe Konrad Hurrell, were struggling to get anything going. Even new signing Bryce Cartwright, renowned for his attacking ability, was making forward pass after forward pass.

Biggest mistake of the night: The guy shouting "Waaaarrrriiiorrrsss" from his car as he drove away from Mt Smart only to go right up the arse of another car.

That last sentence. So good. Fuck I would have loved to see that.

Unless it was in your rear vision mirror!

@cyclops said in NRL 2018:

@no-quarter said in NRL 2018:

Our goalline defense was fricken awesome. Swawming them and putting in the hits when required. That was the biggest positive for me.

RTS is pure class, he would carve up in either code.

Fun game and great to see a good crowd again at Mt Smart. SJ forming a good combo with Green already bodes well.

Agree on RTS, but gee he looked slow on that massive run up the middle after about 20 minutes, about 3 titans chasers all ran him down.

RTS didn't really have much of top end pace. He was just strong in the carry and ran all day. It was his step that was dangerous.

What's the matter with Parramatta? Spanked 54-0 by Manly. Manly have a weak squad (even when compared to Parramatta) yet they ran over Hayne & co.