NRL 2011 - New Beginnings!

New year and things are looking good.

Lets get some discussion going and also get everyone into our tipping competition.

Same as last year on footytips - http://www.footytips.com.au/comps/loeg

password "biggie"

Get to it lads ...

QUEENSLAND TO WIN

WARRIORS TO MAKE PRELIM FINAL

DRAGONS WONT GO BACK TO BACK

SHARKS TO BE DARK HOUSE

Hey who won last years tipping contest again?


:>

Signed up for the potluck that is NRL tipping, love the closeness of this comp, but it can make tipping a nightmare!

Go the Warriors, inspired by our Toyota Cup success we will take it all this year!

Great Warriors squad this year, the best on paper for some time. Berrigan, Mateo and young Rapira are excellent buys. I think we should be gunning for at least a top 4-6 finish. Bring it on!

PS Tipping is a waste of time.

If the Warriors don't make top 4 do you think Cleary will survive?

Yeah wot grinder said.....got your email RA sorry but I'll give it a miss, I just cbf putting in the time and energy of a full season grind. I end up forgetting too much and/or spending 10 seconds on it

Definitely time for Cleary to go if he can't get us to the Top 4.

Interesting to read that somehow Moon is suddenly the flavor of the month and sure to start at centre? Fkn hate that dude! How has he become awesome just at training?

Still a lot of uncertainty about FM's position as well, surely he will play 2nd row? The last thing we needs now is an expensive players playign erraticaly at stand off

Go the mighty tigers

Where did you read about Moon? I saw him in 1st trial game at Greymouth and was shocked at how good he ran -- he seemed faster and way more explosive. Maybe that Laurie Daley tag is starting to come true

Moon had some good games in the latter part of last season at centre.

Moon had some good games in the latter part of last season at centre.

Moon has been playing excellently in the trial games and from all accounts is training really hard. God forbid Maestro but it appears the boy is doing it the old fashioned way, by hard work!

Well thats just it isnt it "by all accounts"...hence my questioning it Its apparently come out of the blue

I'll be happy if he shows up good, and about time. maybe he should have been "training well"when he 1st signed!

Ever the sceptic.

Anyone who saw how well he played in the Newcastle trial certainly isn't surprised at all.

Remember I bagged the signing of Moon and ....that shit winger from Brisbane whose name escapes me right now.........edit KEMP!

I might be a sceptic but my sceptism is nearly always right. If Moon comes through now well about fkn time but Im still dubious, he has shown some terrible nous in the past. He might have learned to run a bit more robustly but he will never be a good stand off (remember thats how he was signed)

Not sceptical about our new signings though, FM is kind of obviously a good buy but I think signing for the Warriors will be a making of Inu. He wil be huge

I think Inu will struggle to get in the first grade side myself. The word is Fisiahi will push ahead of him, if not now he will at some point this season. His form in the pre season games has been awesome!

Krisnan Inu is lazy & actually pretty average, not one of our better buys this year, apparently him and Mateo come as a pair! FM should play 2nd row, I'm surprised they're toying with putting him at stand-off, he has zero kicking game?

Our best buy this season could well be Berrigan, the dude has serious credentials.

Joel Moon has had 70+ games and been pretty much shit in every one of them, I would be surprised if he's suddenly snapped and become awesome.

Looking forward to seeing the Fish in action! Hope the young halves Isaac John / Shaun Johnson get a run-around this year too.

I don't understand all the hate for Joel Moon.

He is a strong runner of the ball and a good one on one tackler. Sometimes he can have a misread on defence, but I think this is an area he is seriously improving in.

He can pass pretty well, and if we have the Mighty Fish on his wing all we will want him to do is draw his man (who will have to pay attention due to Moons physicality), and get the ball out to the man with the serious wheels!

I would certainly argue that Moon had a game or two last year when he was in genuine man of the match form, and as discussed, he was in that form again during the Newcastle Trial.

I'll be at Albany this Saturday and can inform as to how he goes against Manly as well.

Well, to be fair, I fucking HATED him when he first came to the Warriors. We were promised a young Laurie Daley and we got... this muppet

But he seems to have improved out of sight since then -- even though that probably means he's now just a solid first grader

...

I personally don't think there's a chance in hell that Inu won't be starting the season. If he doesn't perform in the first few games then he'll probably get dropped but I suspect management are too stubborn to let a big signing play for the Vulcans, even if that may be the right option.

...

Mateo better not start at 6 either! Big fan of Maloney here

am aware of Inu’s lazy reputation, but I believe he has the ability to become a great player NRL and test. He is also a bible basher so unlikely to ever became a SioneSione, and basically Im banking on him being fired up by being in a more “home” environment. I guess we will see

Moon has been in and out of the side for a reason, he makes all kinds of awful brainless plays both on D and attack. I was always dubious but he completly lost it for me that time he picked up a somewhat dodgy pass and went over the line looking back at the ref basically telegraphing him to call it back. Just put the ball down and smile you dolt! Call yourself a stand off!? Hate!

Sickest team we've named in years!

New Zealand Warriors: 1 Lance Hohaia, 2 Glen Fisiiahi, 3 Joel Moon, 4 Jerome Ropati, 5 Manu Vatuvei, 6 James Maloney, 7 Brett Seymour, 8 Sam Rapira, 9 Aaron Heremaia, 10 Russell Packer, 11 Simon Mannering (captain), 12 Feleti Mateo, 13 Micheal Luck. Interchange: 14 Shaun Berrigan, 15 Jacob Lillyman, 16 Ben Matulino, 17 Lewis Brown, 18 Steve Rapira.



Am I crazy or are we light on props this year, Sammy is obviously proven but Packer isnt really and a couple of injuries in that position could really mean a wobbly looking and light front row. Perhaps this is why Cleary has named a 5 man bench with no real backs on it, but I would have preferred Inu on the bench to Lillyman or even Rapira

I thought we were going to sign Blair

My other concern this year is in the centres, hard to imagine Moon and Ropati exactly ripping teams apart, kick to Manu! again is it

I mean...sure its an exciting looking line up, but somethings bugging me. I think we might miss the 8 and the comp will be won by Melbourne

We were hopeful of signing Blair when the Storm were offloading players to fit under the cap. Once Inglis went though that was all shot to shit. Now his contract finishes at the end of this year but his next contract is likely to be his biggest paying so it will depend on whether we could afford him.

I don't think we're too bad off for props, Lilleyman and Matulino are both props too and Matulino especially did the goods last year. Packer can be hot ro cold but I think he's getting better and better. Also there's no need to have Inu on the bench if we have Berrigan, he can cover both the backs and the forwards. Having a specialist back on the bench makes little sense. 1 cover for backs and 3 forwards is teh standard for benchs in the NRL altho Bennett did buck this trend in '09 with Nightingale on the bench, last year he reverted back to the standard though.

Yep I know all that... but Inu does also covers so many positions, plus I just like him more than Berrigan.... who is Broncos scum and unseen for so long

/wonders if Mannering will spend much time in the centers this season. id prefer to see berrigan out there if he is decent and give more game time to Mara

Oh well...eayl days, I guess its a good sign there is so much possible debate around selections

btw...who was the GIANT from the Toyota Cup last year? Did we keep him? or is he one of the guys who went to other clubs

No way Berrigan can get shifted out to the centres -- dude is slooooooooooooowwwww these days :/

You're fucken crazy bro...

Berrigan= Solid, reliable player; proven title-winner with Broncos, Queensland, Australia
Inu = Known as a lazy player, was a late call-up for a Kiwis that got smashed by Aussie in an Anzac test years ago

If the fish runs good in the next few weeks, I expect Inu to make an appearance at right centre in place of Moon pretty soon into the season... he's far too good to be playing for the Vulcans imo.

Moon, on the other hand, is probably right at home in that team :>

Berrigan is OLD though (youre right about centre gummi, wasnt thinking)

I KNOW Inu is "lazy", but he can stop all that and reach is potential, he's a Warrior now!

Couldn't agree more.

Sam Lousi. Kid was only 18 last year! He's playing for the Warriors U/20's again. I look forward to him maturing and developing hehe.

One things for sure. Gonna be an epic year for fish related puns. :>

Sam Lousi is a beast.

118kgs, and still growing.

That is all lean as well, no fat on those bones.

Word is he could get his NRL debut this year, the club has really high hopes for this kid.

So on NRL on Fox, Ryan Girdler picks the Warriors to win the premiership and Lozza Daley has picked them as the competition dark horse...


Dunno if I like this positive Aussie attitude towards the Warriors...

FUCK I hate Mark Riddell, the guys has this fucken attitude that I would to smack out of him ... fucken cock muncher. So didn't miss him in the NRL ...

Good game betwee the bunnies and roosters last night to open the season. Again just showing how close this competition is between teams ... BEST COMP IN THE WORLD.

Kearny 1 Cleary 0. Eels looked far better organised. Heremia made plenty of runs and he wasnt bad... but half the time he ran because he had to. Worrying lack of sync but early days I suppose

Yep, warriors were disorganized as... Kicking game was awful, the halves were ineffective, Fish had a debut to forget, Hohaia also had an off night...

We can only get better from that performance.... Because that was goddamn awful...

Both hookers were good. Ropati also. Brown had some moments. Rest were all pretty flat.

Also I'm pretty convinced there's a rugby tapu on Eden Park and it's cursing the leagueys for treading on their land.

Eels dominated the Warriors in pretty much all facets of the game. Kearney has clearly had a HUGE impact on them.

Any word on Manu's injury?

6-8 weeks for Manu by the sounds of things. Warriors got owned. BUT in saying that we defended for 75% of the game and it didn't run away from us, its not much but lets take something out of that.

Meh. First game of what's a very long season and it came down to one converted try. Not anything deep to take out of it for either side.

How was Maloney's late hit! He'll be out next week certainly!

Fuck it looked unpleasant. Legs that size look fkn scary bent backward to that extent :/

Legs that look that scary should not be attempted to be tackled in that way either, seriously.... it was an incredibly kamikazi style tackle. Obviously it worked out well for the defender bt if you tried to tackle Manu like that consistantly you would end up with the side of your head crushed in a fairly non-zero % of the time.

Not a great game for the fish as stated but I was impressed by his acceleration and he doesnt look out of place size wise. Still...it seems it was a huge mistake to bring him in for such a big time. Its not unreasonable to suggest he lost the 2 points for us. Can think of at least 2 tries that were directly his fault

sucks. went down to the doggies.

Plenty of promise there tho Neil. They just didn't quite click tonight, which is surprising since the roster hasn't changed that much but it was obvious none the less. The doggies looked good tho. Gotta be the biggest forward pack in the comp (or equal with the Raiders anyway) and Hodgkinson (sp?) looked real good. Growing into his game well.

There will be a rematch in the finals I reckon.

lol I'm 0 from 2 after tonight.

Urgh fucked weekend. Warriors are looking like schoolboys out there ... everything is in 1 & 2's. Our forward pack is suppose to be one of the best in the game now and we are looking SHIT to say the least.

Inglis just had what I recon to be one of his worst games in NRL ...

I think there are players who are trying real hard and there are people who need to lift their game a LOT! Particularly Seymour, Mateo, Locke, these guys all went missing last night. When your main attacking weapons are nowhere to be seen, you're never gonna look like scoring.

Tis a shame because I don't think we're *that* far off the pace but certain players are really letting the aide down atm.

With Dragons, Roosters, Eagles & Storm in the next 5 weeks we're staring down the barrel of a wooden spoon start.

At least we should beat the Sharks!



gc.

Yeah definitely a tough start. Hopefully we get our shit sorted soon.

Everyone knows it's all about the run home in the NRL but still... The team just isn't clicking at the moment.

Sharks upset the Dragons last night!

Which sucks for us big-time, because we're playing them next week and there's no way they will lose by an upset two weeks running.

And the Sharks were our only lowly ranked team in the next few weeks.



gc.

I warned you buggers about this at the start of the season! our squad is somewhat oddly balanced imo. I think we willbe bottomof thetable with zero wins after 6/7 rounds

UNLESS...Cleary pulls off a master stroke/risky move. and I think that move is to give Mateo a crack at 6. Both maloney and Seymour have looked like shit anyway Let them fight it out for half back jersey

I sqw why Moon has ben so highly rated, he appears to have leanred to throw himself into the line, which is good but he still made a massive and very poorly timed error in the context of the game. Hopefully he can quit that

I wish we had sold Locke after his breakthrough season, would have got a good price for him. he is simply too small for this level and unless he can puit on 10 kg+ nd amintgain his agility he will never be a great NRL winger. He can look fantastic if its an open game and play flows his way. But in tight games and big boofers running at him he is just a huge liability. You can even see the way he takes it to the line how psyched out he gets by being monstered

Maloney > Seymour for the 7 jersey imo Been incredibly underwhelmed by Seymour in the last 2 games...

WTF at not sending that try in the first half to video ref!?!?!?

Missed tackles in the Tigers game:

Locke = 5
Moon = 5
Seymour = 10
Total team missed tackles = 57

Seymour basically caressed Farrah on the way to his try from 5m out.

Would like to see Mateo tried out at stand-off too as it would at least force him to get his hands on the ball more often.

Ropati is another concern, doesn't offer much on attack (when was the last time he broke the line?) and is a defensive liability.

Berrigan is looking the goods so far.

Ropati scored two tries in the opening game, one of which was a great wingers try.

Well well fucken well .... welcome back Greg Inglis!

Must have been awesome! How did you find time to watch it? Or is he in your fantasy team? Lots of points...



gc.

Watched the 30min highlight package during the innings break.

Nah don't have him in my league, Benji is my high money player.

GI not that pricey mate! Most of the outside backs are pretty cheap.



gc.

I'll prob start paying more attension to it after the cwc. I can see this actually taking up a lot of time each week (compared to tipping and cwc fl anyway)

Actually doesn't take up that much time tbh - you can only transfer 2 players per week so you can't really dedicate more than 10-15min to it at a time. It's way, way easier than cricket fantasy.



gc.

Dislocated hip for the Tigers player... It looked sickening.

Yeah. I imagine he might be out for a while. He had to be taken to hospital and be put under general while they sorted it out ...and Tuquri has a suspected broken wrist.

Tiges looked good tho. They finally clicked and Benji... Isn't it awesome to see arguably the best player in the game currently is a New Zealander! His hands and footwork is just amazing...

Well I don't know. Its ok to lose to a team like the Dragons but there is no excuse for the stupid mistakes. Where is the problem guys? Perhaps time to look at Ivan and the way he does things? Maybe he is just not firing them up enough.

Just checked out final stats and its pretty much all the same for the teams so why did it look like we got totally out played?

No real game plan.

Ok so I'm gonna create this weeks Warriors assessment entirely in question format because I believe the warriors have a few.

Who is calling the plays out on the field? Why did I notice that not only did we get caught running the ball up on the last twice but many times we ran the ball up on the 4th tackle with no attempt to look to play with any width in our sets at all? Why do we have no dummy runners? Or players running lines inwards to create doubt in the sliding defence? Or any runners coming from deep at all really? Why do none of our fringe runners break or even dent the line? Why after being able to rely on our awesome kicking game last year, is it so awful this year despite using the same field kickers? Why after our youth teams having done so well over the last 3 years have we seen none of the talent come through and dominate at the top level? Where's Shaun Johnson? Why is Lewis Brown the only player out there who seems to try his hardest for 100% of the game?

So many questions... It's really hard to see us getting much better at this rate. The last couple of weeks I have seen no real change or improvement to provide any real answers, just the same questions coming up after each week. I think we need a serious injection of attitude and that has to come from fringe or youth players getting a shot. They may not have the answers straight away but the team needs a shake up. Everyone just seems so flat and there appears to be no direction at all. A young and inspired half might provide some attacking impetus because we look fucking impotent right now. This week we just persisted with attacking up the middle with very few results. Our fringes are no threat at all. Maybe an answer there is to have Ukuma Ta'ai on the bench to have someone who can at least bend the line on the edge. The personal we have out on the field at the moment just isn't the right mix.

edit. Ok so that wasn't *entirely* in question format.

Seymour is horrible, he looks like he just doesnt care, what the hell is his problem. he needs to be dumped. Unfortunately Isaaac John didnt play well last week either

Moon and Ropati are not a centre combination that would scare anybody. I echo the call Brown looks our best but ;perhaps he needs to be converted to centre, our squad doesnt really need another trying hard tackly forward. We already have Luck, Mannering and that terribly buy Lilyman doing that. I as I said earlier I dotn think the squad or at least playing 17 is properly balanced.

We appear to be missing a juggernaut type prop
We have very ordinary centres
Our "star" wing is too small
Our fullback is out of form
Our halves are pretty bad and mostly unproven players who miss tackles
Cleary appears to be selecting conservatively and should be giving the likes of Mara Ukama and Lousi a run

With all these problems plus the ones dalai mentioned its not wonder we are not winning? I would drop Seymour Heremai Lillyman and Moon for the next game (bit hard on Aaran perhaps but I want to see mara)

I think it's time to give Pita Godinet a start. He'll carve up! :>

The Warriors only game-plan got injured in Rd 1!

Seymour definitely doesn't seem to give a shit about anything...he has got to be the most anonymous half in the comp, constantly missing on both attack and D

The only other thing I would add to your list Maestro, is that we've invested in a strike-weapon/marquee buy in Mateo and still haven't got a clue how to utilise him.

Where's Steve Rapira?

lol Grind.

I would like to see Brown shifted to centre and Ukuma Ta'ai brought onto the bench. I would also like to see Shaun Johnson get a run this year but I think I read somewhere he was injured?

It's been confirmed that Ropati fucked his ACL. Out for the season.

Ah shit... He was looking good too, one of the few that did.

Been thinking about it, we could still see Lewis Brown in one centre position and Elijah Taylor could make his debut in the other centre spot. He's a talented youngster who's been pushing for a spot for a while.

Ivan is obviously not happy, look at the team! Imagine being a fly in the wall of the anouncement. I know one of the training staff, I may have to enquire as to how this went down!

1.GLEN FISIIAHI
2 BILL TUPOU
3 SHAUN BERRIGAN
4 SIMON MANNERING (c)
5 KRISNAN INU
6 FELETI MATEO
7 JAMES MALONEY
8 JACOB LILLYMAN
9 AARON HEREMAIA
10 RUSSELL PACKER
11 LEWIS BROWN
12 UKUMA TA’AI
13 MICHEAL LUCK

Interchange:
14 KEVIN LOCKE
15 SAM RAPIRA
16 BEN MATULINO
17 ELIJAH TAYLOR
18 ALEHANA MARA

lmao ...

Berrigan and Mannering to the centres... Interesting!

So who's gone then?

Ropati (injury), Hohaia, Moon, Seymour... Locke to the bench

Any others?



gc.

Berrigan and Mannering to the centres? Well that's a really defensive move by Cleary, there's definitely a case for strengthening up the fringe defense but that seems a little *too* defensive for mine. Definitely slows down the speed of our flanks. I think we'll see a lot of interchanging of positions with that bench.

But no Hohaia at all! Now that's surprising! I thought he'd be relegated to the bench but completely dropped! That's a big call! Good on him for making it! Seymour and Moon needed to go, thank god.

Good to see Lewis Brown and big Uku get starting positions!

CAN WE GET WAYNE BENNETT NEXT YEAR? You heard it here first ...

No.



gc.

Wayne will be back at the Broncs next year.

I was thinking if the hypothetical situation arose where Cleary got booted, who would be his replacement. So I started thinking about which coaches are out of a job and one name immediately sprung to mind as the obvious successor to Cleary.



Brian McClennon.

While I obviously like BM I think talk of booting Cleary is a little rough, but perhaps typcal of how brutal this comp is for coaches. I cant remember Ivans record off the top of my head but its pretty decent in terms of finals made?

I like the look of this new team, Matoe at 6! Give him a decent run there plse

Im not really suggesting we boot Cleary but is it that harsh to think about it?

He has been at the helm for 5yrs now without being able to produce the goods. Now a year where we were tipped agian to do very well we have lost our first 3 games and look out of place in the comp. We need something fresh ...

I'm not suggesting that we do just yet. But if we have a bad year this year I think it will be Cleary's last year at the helm of the Warriors.

The mighty wests vs the evil eastern suburbs scum... I think i'll be eating chicken pizza on sunday...

Lots of injury concerns for you guys though, you gotta be concerned about that. I see Moltzen gets a start though at least.

Injuries Sminjuries, Easts are exactly the type of team that the Tigers will get routinely belted by this season. Easts by 20

Hugh McGahan to score a try? Craig Salvatori to have a big game?

The Warriors have signed Shaun Metcalf up to a 1 year contract to cover the centre position. To those who don't remember, this is the guy who as a 15 year old, attacked his pregnant girlfriend with his mates, kicking an punching her in the stomach to try and force a miscarriage. I'm not happy about this, I don't see a place in the family friendly Warriors club for someone like this.

On a side note, Gummi you remember last year when we watched Glenora play Te Atatu and Ramiz started sleeting him from the sidelines? Haha. To everyone else, Shaun turned around and gave him the death stare and we all started edging away from Ramiz.

Very mature.

Ungh auto correct. That was meant to say sledging. It wasnt related to that incident, it was more along the lines of: "you're shit!"

Don't pretend you're above a bit of sledging Reaction.

Good game from the boys today. We definitely looked a lot sharper on attack. The youngsters played real well but I reckon we need to learn to use Fish's running game a bit more tho, he certainly showed what he's capable of. Really liked Elijah Taylor too, showed his ball skills, defended well bar being a bit slow off the line once while defending our try line and also had the maturity to organise players around him on his first game in the top grade. I think this is the future for the warriors, we need to bring through more young players more regularly. We have the player base, it's time to use it.

Also Mateo needs to learn that he doesn't have to offload every time he gets the opportunity.

Couple of other things: alarming amount of missed tackles still in the first half. We seem to drop off a lot on our one on one tackles. Especially against Nathan Gardiner today. Also lol at the Sharks targeting the left side of our defense, Mannering is one of our best defensive players!





Hey what's with Robbie Farah this season? He looks like he's trying too hard.

Interesting article here: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/kiwi-invasion-could-dilute-australias-talent-base-of-the-future-20110402-1csce.html





Fuck I remember the days when there was a couple of kiwis playin for Manly, Brent Todd for the Raiders and that was it!

Oh what the fuck, links not working again??