2023 Cronulla Sharks Player Review: with Sam Shinazzi and Josh Bolling

[00:00:00] SharkCast! SharkCast! SharkCast! SharkCast! SharkCast! Fafina got the ball back in the Shire, 10-point slide jump because we're coming out with a trophy. Hey there, welcome to SharkCast.spotter podcast dedicated to the greatest sporting club in

[00:00:35] the history of the world. The mighty Cronulla Sutherland Sharks. This show is brought to you by Dyson Logistics, the Royal Motio Club in boardhacking and Jason Hawes at Crips and Crips Real Estate. My name is Sam Shinazzi and OG from 2015. This is the ninth season

[00:00:49] and going into the 10th soon enough of SharkCast.spot. Thanks for sticking around for so long. Thanks for finding us if you're a recent listener. You are all deeply appreciated. I am joined today, very special episode, an annual episode if you will by my friend

[00:01:05] and colleague Josh Bolling. We're going to talk about the year that was as far as the players go. It's our annual players episode. We're going to rank them out of 10, but before

[00:01:15] we get there I'm going to bring in my friend and colleague Josh Bolling who is a little busted right now. A big weekend of touch footy up on the Gold Coast. Good weekend

[00:01:25] away with a couple of mates and lots of footy and maybe a couple of beers in there too. How did you go? We went pretty good. We played eight games, made the finals, fell short of the grand final though unfortunately but we got a lot further than

[00:01:41] I think we expected to. So good weekend. And can we reveal the big news from the weekend? We were allowed to talk about who was in your team? Well maybe not for now. Really?

[00:01:51] Yeah, just because I don't know if it's out there yet. Well what I'm going to say is because we've already dropped something is that you played with a young gentleman who is going to be in the shark system very shortly. Correct, very talented. I'll say

[00:02:05] that. Well name and shame when it's official official but it's happening and from what you told me we're in good hands. Definitely. Ball player, tough, big, aggressive. It just proves Josh that the shark family is worldwide. It's on the Gold Coast.

[00:02:22] It's all around the world. Speaking about all around the world, Josh without bumming anyone out, just want to give a shout out to anyone who is affected by what's going on in this big bad world particularly the main news of the week. Very sad,

[00:02:37] very depressing stuff. It's not all we're here to talk about but as someone who has some family involved and that kind of thing it is highly distressing and I just want to send my love out to everyone who is affected by it and

[00:02:51] if you're not affected by it please be careful about what you post on social media because it affects other people. Also Josh, big weekend in Australia we're voting. Don't forget to vote my friend. I know which way I have gone.

[00:03:02] I've already voted because I have a legitimate reason to vote early but don't forget to vote. It's important. Yeah, I can look forward to it. Sorry to get so serious. Yeah, good start. Well, it wasn't a great year for the sharks

[00:03:13] and we're going to jump straight into it. Player review, Josh. We're going to do each player alphabetically who played first grade. We're going to give them a ranking out of 10 each of us. We're going to spend as little or as

[00:03:27] long as we each like on each player. I guess we'll just dive straight into it. Have we got anything else to talk about? I mean there's plenty to talk about. We've got future episodes planned and there's a lot happening off the field,

[00:03:38] the leagues clubs in the news and... What about Michael McGuire being named the New South Wales Blues coach or about to be confirmed? I think I like that guy and I think I respect him and I think that it's a good choice.

[00:03:52] And it's someone I completely forgot about. I was thinking who are we going to get? I like it when these people let go of their job and they don't sit and let it affect them overly in the sense that they bounce back into different roles

[00:04:08] and he's bounced around at a few different assistant positions and as a consultant and that kind of thing and a lot of the guys tend to do that. Well I probably don't think he should have been let go from the Tigers anyway but

[00:04:20] aside from that we've seen how passionate he is. He's won a comp. I mean why not? I really like it. It's not that hard to coach the elite players. If you just get a good system in with someone who's stern probably takes it a little more

[00:04:34] serious maybe we need just to change things up. I think it's been a bit like the days at the New South Wales camp. I think it's going to be less fluffy as well. It's going to be less about the build up. It's just going to be

[00:04:47] about playing your best on the day. I'm sure he has the way he does things and his routines but A. they can't be as cookie as Brad Fittler and B. all about business let's go out there and play hard and I like it. There's no real

[00:05:02] football political issues with him. He's a straight shooter. He'll pick who he thinks is worthy at the time. He seems like a good man just generally. I just get a good vibe whenever you see him speak. I really like the way he thinks about

[00:05:15] football as well. He's not necessarily had the greatest time at the Tigers. I think that would have been a hard job for anyone. Oh man. He looked unhealthy by the end of that. When you watch that that doco series it I thought it made

[00:05:28] him look good. It did. Yeah but anyway we're here to talk about players. We're not here to talk about war voting or Michael McGuire. First cab off the rank Josh. He only played two minutes because we're going alphabetically and

[00:05:41] that was Dan Atkinson played two minutes as the 18th man I believe. Yeah it didn't get a shot this year but when not injured played well for the Jets. We saw him go well in the trial as well earlier in the year. I thought he'd get

[00:05:56] some more game time but wasn't to be. He is with us again next year. What are your thoughts on Dan Atkinson moving forward? I think we'll see him get a couple more games next year. Obviously pending injury. I think

[00:06:10] Seonim Ronaldo weren't out as much as they have been previously and when they were they were covered by other guys. Conor Tracy was in there a lot. I like him. I do. I think he's got a nice body shape.

[00:06:22] He looks strong. He looks quick enough but he's not probably going to get much time without injury. Injuries can happen at any moment. There could be one at training in game at any time and he'll be one of those guys that's

[00:06:38] probably going to get first crack I think. He's got a real electric spark to the way he does things. He does things really quickly and in a team that doesn't really have that much he does stand out for that reason and I like his

[00:06:51] creativity as well so I think it's a great thing that he's sticking around. We say it year in year out. You do need a strong 30 man roster and he's definitely in the lower end of that but he wouldn't be able to place higher up.

[00:07:06] He was in the running for that fullback spot in the final as well wasn't he? He was. If Conor Tracy wasn't fit we'll probably a week away. I think he was probably next to go. So he's still hanging around the top spot which

[00:07:20] is good for him so we'll see what happens to him in the off season and trials and we all know that that can not a bad thing if he has a great off season

[00:07:29] and good trials so we'll see how he goes. Next up we have the Sharks player of the year and that was Blake Brailey. He played all 25 games. He played close to 2,000 minutes and he had a career best season. Not without

[00:07:47] his criticisms along the way and still hasn't reached his peak form. Career best started running more. We've said it week in week out. We need to see more of it. I like the way he's going.

[00:07:59] Maybe it takes him a while. Maybe he's a slow path to where he needs to be. I like the fact that the coach is backing him in. It's a long-term deal. He does have his detractors. I'm not one of them.

[00:08:11] My criticism for Blake is he needs to step up more and that's a fair criticism. It's not something I'm saying he's a small one. He needs to step up more. Whether it's playing West Tigers, whether it's playing in a final,

[00:08:25] I want to see him rise. He's not elite yet and I want him to be elite and I believe he can be elite. He's got time on his side. I don't think the time is sort of dripping away slowly but I think that

[00:08:36] if we're still talking about this in two years time it'd be disappointing. I'm going to give Blake which is my annual year. Strong, solid seven and a half. Career best and I don't think that's a bad thing.

[00:08:49] No. I guess on stats and output it would be his best year. I think he's played better though. I think he's played better in probably a year ago, two years ago. I actually think he was better. In what way?

[00:09:02] Just in terms of his impact on the game. His numbers are obviously better. Like his try assists and he had and tries were improvement. I actually think he was playing better two years ago. I actually think he's regressed a touch. I'm just looking at his numbers now.

[00:09:18] Playing wise? Nine kicks in 25 games where he played nearly every minute of every game for 183 meters is pretty disappointing. Just seeing that now is that's a little alarming for me because most hookers in this comp, the good ones, the elite ones are kicking four times a game.

[00:09:38] He's kicked nine in 25 games. He's tackling, he's obviously outstanding. He's got a great technique. He's stronger than he looks and he plays above his weight and he's durable. So that he wins me over there with points but just again it's the same story for me with Blake.

[00:09:58] I'm not trying to bash him because I do think he's a very talented player and we've said it a million times that's why I'm so harsh on him. But I could only probably give him a six.

[00:10:09] All right we move on to alphabetically. Jesse Colhoun, he made six appearances. He started once, so five off the bench. They were mostly later in the season I believe. He did have some injury throughout the year. He starred in lower grades.

[00:10:28] I was in between underwhelmed and overwhelmed by Jesse's performances this year. Big ticker, big heart. I like his running style. He can make meters. I think he's just got to do some growing. He's still young. He's still raw, still green and I appreciate that.

[00:10:43] I think that he's got a good future ahead of him. I did see some things that I want to have out of his game and they were some errors. They were some penalties given away. Wouldn't mind seeing the defence tightening up a little bit.

[00:10:57] I don't think he's got any defensive issues but I did see some missed tackles that I would have thought he would be making. And they were probably in bigger moments overall. It's only six appearances that he played. Some of those were for short times off the bench.

[00:11:11] It's hard to judge him on all that. I'll give him a six and a half and that's not anything overly negative. I think he probably gets a seven and a half to eight if I don't see those penalties and errors. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

[00:11:24] I think he started his first grade stint really well. He's last probably two games in first grade led him down. I've been on record saying that I think the world of Jesse and I think he's going to have a huge future.

[00:11:36] I can see him being a Jack Williams type for us but at a high level, I think his ceiling is higher. I can see at him at his best football playing for New South Wales. Like I think so much of like coming through lower,

[00:11:51] he just destroys New South Wales Cup every week. He's too good for New South Wales Cup and he's 21. Imagine what he's going to be like at 25 in this system potentially starting as a lock or a front-row.

[00:12:04] He can play kind of everywhere at the moment because he's a bit lighter. We saw him play nearly 80 minutes in second row against Manley and was really good. I've seen him come off the bench in the front row. I've seen him got a bit of a pace,

[00:12:19] like he's quicker than he looks. He's got all the attributes to be a really, really good first grader. Just going to give him minutes. He's just going to get time in the field. Yeah and sometimes that can be hard to find when everyone's fit

[00:12:31] and he's the young gun. So yeah we'll see what happens with him. He's definitely well-liked by the coach and by the staff and he will definitely factor into I guess at the top 17 if not top 18 week in, week out next year. Next up we have Dale Finuccan.

[00:12:46] He only made 13 appearances which was disappointing. Yeah injury suspension kind of cruel his season it's a tough one with Dale because we bought him and I I think I expected the Dale Finuccan from almost the late Canterbury days. In my head that's who he was this meter eater,

[00:13:05] this this workhorse who'll go 80 minutes and that's unrealistic given his age. I like what he does when he's on the field. I think that he's going to be a really important piece of the puzzle next year because of the experience factor.

[00:13:21] Well we're missing a lot of that now with Wade leaving. We saw Andrew leave the year before. Tolman's gone like the experience factor is pretty low now. Dale's the most experienced guy there and I think that

[00:13:33] we hear it all the time and I know I listen to sometimes question about his off-field leadership being the key thing that the sharks love and a lot of people are like well I'd rather have someone on the field

[00:13:45] and there's arguments to be had there but I do think that this year that's going to be really important. The off-field training and the way you carry yourself him and Cam McInnis they'll lead the way with that and you need guys like that.

[00:13:56] And I think if Dale's our elder statesman and he's the guy that carries the torch for the older gentleman in the team, I don't have a problem with that and it's going to be interesting to see where he goes positionally.

[00:14:08] I will get into it at some point if not now but I think that possibly he'll be a bench. I would have him as a bench guide. I don't know if that's going to happen but I think Cam has the 13th spot.

[00:14:17] But I liked what Dale did when he was on the field. He's all hard. Yeah 13 games is hard for me to judge him on just because what it's less than half the season but it's around half the season.

[00:14:30] I'll give Dale a, I think I'm just going to give him a 7 and that's where the an asterisk of disappointment about the injuries and suspension but that's not entirely on him so. Yeah I was actually really disappointed with Dale this year.

[00:14:43] I found him quite ineffective in every game that he played. I don't remember a time where I was like wow like Dale was really like leading this here. Whereas last year we got a lot of that until the end of the year I thought Dale was incredible

[00:14:55] for most of the last year. This year I felt we were always weaker with him on the field. I was almost at a point where I was like we need McKinnison once he came on. That was when we felt we looked better and I felt safer.

[00:15:07] It doesn't make up for what you're saying. I'm not trying to change what you're saying. There was a couple of games and obviously that's not enough but there were a couple of games where I think

[00:15:16] we're all at that point and he put a bit of egg on our faces. I think his efforts are never questionable. Like he's always like he's always dragging across and trying to get cover on a defense when we're short.

[00:15:27] He's always trying but there's a point where the body doesn't allow you to do what you want to do or used to be able to do. Tell me about it. I just think next year he's got to be on the bench.

[00:15:39] He's got to start on the bench and I'll be really disappointed if McKinnis loses that starting 13 for him. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I hope he comes out and makes me look very silly. No, I think it's a good move man.

[00:15:53] A, Cam is probably the best lock we have. But B, all we've talked about that now is him getting older and his body. So it makes sense that he'd be on the bench and wind him up. It's easier for him to let him go.

[00:16:06] Yeah, come on 20 minutes, 25 minutes after and he can actually impact the game at a smaller frame with his footwork too. That might be better for his game and obviously better for us as well. So I'm going to give Dale a five.

[00:16:20] Next up we have club captain Wade Graham who ended up playing 20 games which is quite amazing given the way the year was looking and the way his season was looking. And if we were to judge it on the first half of the year

[00:16:34] we'd be a little bit harsh on Wade. If you judge it on the second half of the year you'd be quite glowing. I love the comeback with what was it six, seven, eight games to go.

[00:16:45] We said it on the show all he kind of needed was a bit of fitness. The bench thing wasn't really working for him and when we needed him I thought he was pretty good. He wasn't old Wade but he was getting closer.

[00:16:57] We played a lot better as a team when he played a lot better as a player and for him to go out that way I just thought was a nice touch because he goes out as a good memory.

[00:17:07] Not to say that that would tarnish his career at all because it wouldn't for me at all but it's just nice that we had that nice ending. In the last set of five, six games he was in our top five best players a lot of the time

[00:17:18] which is great. First half of the year he was all over the shop positionally. He was all over the shop as a player doing things that we would not attribute to what he has done throughout his career.

[00:17:32] It didn't help I don't think with defensive players around him making bad errors but yeah I think overall I'll give, I'm going to give a six and a half

[00:17:41] but if he played like he finished the whole year he would be close to an eight for me in all seriousness. So we send him off, we love the guy, we thank him for his contributions. Not sure what's happening in the future with him.

[00:17:54] I'm sure he'll end up at the club in some way or shape but also just got married to his lovely partner now wife which is great over in Canada. That's my thoughts on Wade. Yeah similar vibes.

[00:18:04] I was pretty worried at the start of the year with some of those stints he was pulling out and to a point where I think he was essentially dropped and I thought that was going to be the end.

[00:18:14] He just it was not working him coming off the bench as a middle and trying to be this link man. Smaller minutes couldn't impact the game. He's a long, he's a long game player. I'm so happy that he was able to finish the way he did.

[00:18:28] He deserved that as a club legend and I mean that when I say legend of this club. He would not have deserved to go out being a benchy or or not even being in the side and impacted the side in a really positive way.

[00:18:42] Like he was defense, his communication. Got a couple of meat pies at the end of the year which was good and the crowd and the boys getting around him. Would have loved to have sent him out with a fairytale premiership wasn't meant to be.

[00:18:54] I hope in some capacity he stays within the club or just even as an ambassador of some sort. So I think he's got a good gig on triple M as well. I'm actually going to give Wade a seven

[00:19:06] because I think he was a major catalyst in repairing the season and I was pretty harsh on him at the start of the year so I think he deserves a seven. All right next up we have Braden Hamlin-Welley played 19 games. He started 17 of those.

[00:19:21] He was averaging close to 10 meters per run. He at times was bustling and rampaging. Other times not. I mean he played 19 games but injury did cruel him at really important times when just when he was sort of getting really good in his own performances he would be injured.

[00:19:42] I'm still not convinced we've seen the best out of Hamlin-Welley and I'm a really big fan and I hope that he's or he's sticking around for the short term but I hope that I kind of hope that if he can keep performing the way he does

[00:19:54] that he stays with us throughout his career. I mean right now he's banged up which is ironic me saying this but I want to see an injury free season from him for him not from him. I'm going to give Braden a strong seven.

[00:20:08] That really surprises me that he played 19 games because it felt like he was out longer than that maybe some of those games you'd factor in being injured as well through them just it's just so disappointing

[00:20:18] because he's so good whenever like you said whenever he started to get going and he was just like destroying defensive lines and scattering them and then getting an offload and that's where we play our best football with scattered defensive lines.

[00:20:31] He'd get injured and through no fault of his own I know he works his backside off. One was a hip drop and that was the was at the Calvars game where he was

[00:20:41] on fire like he was playing so good and then he came back a couple of weeks later took him about a game or two and he was going good again and then he got injured again and I think he missed the final as well

[00:20:52] the roosters game you know we just missed him at crucial times his leadership is you know he's not a rookie anymore. I just want to see the best of him and I want like you said I want to see him

[00:21:02] get through a season and injured to see what potentially has to get to get 25 games in and find that fitness and find that he's best because he's nowhere near it yet and I know he's got another level to go.

[00:21:15] I'm going to give Braden a 7.5 because I think when he was there and when he was on the field he impacted us positively. Big body we missed the big bodies this year. Yeah absolutely what did you give him? A game of 7.5 do I? Seven or 7.5?

[00:21:33] I thought for the most part he was our best forward or at least best middle. Best middle yes yeah agree. Proper even if you want to go that far. Speaking of such people we have someone who ended up playing 18 games

[00:21:45] for us off the bench and that is tall Tom Hazleton who had a heck of a season really I think lived up to what we thought he would and for me there's not

[00:21:58] a lot of negativity here for a guy who's still learning his trade for a guy who's still getting used to being a first grade footballer. Like a lot of our listeners I love this guy I think that he

[00:22:09] should be one of the first guys picked purely for body shape we've talked about that before and also the skill that goes with that it's nice having the body and then not being able to play he can play

[00:22:19] and I just think he's someone that we're going to grow with and super impressed with his attitude on and off the field. I will give Tom I mean I go as far as saying eight and a half I don't know why

[00:22:32] I'm sort of struggling over that but I'm happy to say eight and a half for Tom tall Tom definitely just someone yeah I would pick week in week out at the moment. Just what we were saying with Brayden being our best forward Tom was probably

[00:22:46] right behind him if not I would even maybe say he was our best forward Tom this year. He made impact every single game he played for us I don't think he played a bad game this year

[00:22:56] and the best thing about him was every game he was getting better and better. His fitness you could see from if you watch his first game this year to his last his fitness levels and also his output during that time was better he would play

[00:23:11] 15 minutes and be gone gassed and then he was playing 25 30 minutes and still look good and that's a credit to him and it's a credit to the coaching staff for having the the

[00:23:22] Cajones to play him and to pick him and I can't wait to see him next year and I would even say there's potential for him to be a starting front-roller next year.

[00:23:33] Yeah I know you lose that impact if you do but you want your best players on the field as much as possible and getting him to stints. And I think we've talked about this with some other

[00:23:45] hosts on the show but he's giving me the Luke Douglas vibes and if if he can turn what he does into that workhorse kind of Luke Douglas style Luke had the same shape maybe it's tiny bit shorter

[00:23:58] but still a giant of a man and Luke Douglas is one of the best props we've ever had in the club so that's where I kind of want him to go without losing that impact.

[00:24:07] Well I think he's more dynamic than Douglas as well I think he's got the best of Douglas but he's also more dynamic we saw him on his intercept they got called back he's quick for a big man he's agile scored a couple of meat pies.

[00:24:19] Your starting suggestion for me is completely fine like if that's the way it goes then I'm all for it. I'm going to give him an eight. That was really good.

[00:24:28] Speaking of really good almost man of the match in the game he played in Perth it was only one game for Marwini Harotti and he has signed on in the last week or so for another season

[00:24:38] at the Sharks which is great for him great for the club good club man he's never really going to grab the headlines he's never going to win a Dali and my dare say but A I like that he's

[00:24:52] young still he's way younger than we all thought B I love the fact that he's so respected by the club that they just keep signing him now they only sign him for year deals but that's not necessarily all about him that could be where the club's at

[00:25:05] that's what they can afford that's what they can spare and to get a contract these days in the NRL it's not an easy thing it's not like like yeah you need 30 guys on your roster or whatever it is

[00:25:14] but it doesn't mean anyone gets a deal like this guy has earned it he's a great trainer he's well respected and liked in the club and he showed a lot of people up including

[00:25:27] me and I dare say you Josh and a lot of people in the game against South's in Perth absolutely fantastic we needed that it was part of the turnaround and he was a big part of it

[00:25:39] scoring tries saving tries good season with the Jets I just think that I mean I'm not going to give him a score because he played one game maybe I don't know maybe give him an

[00:25:49] argument eight because based off the game yeah he was near man of the match but I think that signing him for depth I think it's it's a good thing you can kick goals he's a bit of an all-rounder

[00:26:01] he's never in all honesty close to my next in line it's just just based on what I've seen him do over the years but if you're as good as your last game then maybe he should be next in line

[00:26:14] like he was fantastic I think he's a good squad player and you see sometimes people complain about players like this that get signed it's like you cannot have 30 superstars you've got

[00:26:25] to have guys that don't need to get paid much they can come in and do a job five games or under a season and that's what he is he's reliable enough you know he can play first grade he is pretty

[00:26:37] consistently good in the cup every week can fill multiple positions can kick goals like you said so I'm happy if he keeps signing one new deal for the next five years cool I'm fine with

[00:26:48] I have some idea what he might be getting paid but not not one that I would completely throw out onto a show like this but it's not huge money it's huge money for guys like you and I but it's not

[00:26:59] huge money in the scheme of the cap so it's not like they signed Mowini and they're missing out on someone else exactly it's a lower tiered income but having said that I mean every time

[00:27:10] he gets signed he's not playing for less so yeah good luck to him good luck to the family and we'll see what the year brings for him friend of the show Royce Hunt is up next he played 20 games

[00:27:22] he started the six of those I thought his form was up and down this year a bit like the majority of the forwards the more he played the better he got the fitter he looked there were

[00:27:34] some games where you know he was he was blowing pretty hard after five minutes and that's not really what we need there were other games where he was motoring for 15 20 and it was what we need

[00:27:48] at his best Royce is absolutely destroying and bustling and a meter eater and physically tough he's got a great offload I think at his worst he can be just a bit run of the mill which we

[00:28:03] don't need I see more positive than negative in Royce I want to see him have a great off season I think the fitter he is the better he's going to be you don't want to see him lose all of that size

[00:28:18] but there are a few times when he ran out and it was to be fair coming off injury or whatever and I'll be like oh I don't know about this but the fitter he is the better he is terrific human

[00:28:28] off the field good club man a lot of fun happy is in the system I want to see him at his best I don't know if this year he was at his best there were times where I thought maybe we're

[00:28:41] getting there and we didn't I'll give Royce a very respectable six and a half but a lot of that is based on just wanting to see him be a tiny bit fitter yeah say that with respect to

[00:28:54] there's some games there where you go wow this guy is a freak just no one could touch him barge over try he got a couple of tries was a lot better in defense this year I thought as well

[00:29:05] with his as particular with his reads like I just like you said sometimes he'd come on and he'd be absolutely gone and you'd have to rip him straight back off which didn't make sense because other times like you said he he would come on and pump out

[00:29:20] really good 25 minutes and you kind of sit there wondering why we're not getting that every week what is it that is my it is it he's coming on the wrong time we're doing too much defense and

[00:29:30] there's just luck or is there something else to I don't know but I like Royce and I want him to succeed because I think he's a really good and a real bench option I don't think he should

[00:29:41] be starting I don't think starting is his is where he does his best work yeah I agree with that yeah and you want guys like that who are man mammoths to come off after 25 minutes give him 15

[00:29:52] to absolutely go nuts get that half time break in give us another 10 and then get off when we're carrying four forwards on the bench he probably should be the one at the moment who plays the

[00:30:04] fewest minutes but if that's going to be the case you need him to rip and tear yeah the entire time he's out there when there's three forwards and a utility who probably won't get much time if any

[00:30:17] then we're going to need more game time from him and I think it's just that also that that might have affected his game this year where that happened to him for one week he'd be on the bench

[00:30:26] playing longer the next week he'd be playing shorter than he'd be starting starting so it was a bit all over the shop for Royce and getting 20 games in season two yeah probably the most

[00:30:35] he's played not necessarily a young prop but not a prop that's been playing 10 years of first grade as well so he's got a fair bit in him to come and yeah we'll see what the future brings for

[00:30:46] Royce as Kurt Cobain starts up on my alarm Josh next up we're gonna take a break soon but next up we have some who might say was our best player he was certainly close to it and that

[00:31:00] was the great Nico Heinz he played 21 games he had a whole bunch of assists he had a whole bunch of things he was the third best player in theory in the NRL which was a tiny bit surprising I thought

[00:31:13] he'd be top 10 or something but to see him go so high was great it also has to be said it wasn't as good a year as last year that's an obvious statement I do think that he's our best player

[00:31:23] I do think he's integral to what we do he needs to probably just work a little bit on the game that he wants to play we saw him at times be the sharks were all Nico then at times was part Nico

[00:31:38] he tried his hand a bit too many times this way that way whilst I don't think it's a problem the way the media thinks it's a problem I do want to see him ice some games a bit better

[00:31:49] we've seen him do it at different levels but obviously there's two of the three finals he played in for us the opportunity was there it didn't happen for a variety of different reasons not necessarily completely on him but he's our elite guy he's our go-to guy and unfortunately

[00:32:07] for him the pressure is on him he's the one that's going to win us games or not I love the fact he's a shark I love the fact that he's a good dude I saw him last week just in the local

[00:32:20] hood walking around walking his dog he's friendly to everyone a great role model his heart's in the right place and on the field just a hell of a talent and I think if we can

[00:32:33] get Nico back to the year before last so probably just step up a tiny bit more I think we're on our way to some special times I'm going to give Nico a really really strong

[00:32:46] seven and a half I was hoping for like a nine just wasn't quite there I think his kicking game was down a little bit this year and if I sound negative about Nico I'm not I thought he was

[00:32:59] one of our better players we need him on the field and I'm extremely happy he's a shark long long term and we're much better club having him on and off the field so I'll give him

[00:33:10] a very respectful seven and a half yeah I think um as a fan base we'll probably a little harsh on him this year just because of the high expectations he set for himself and for the team

[00:33:21] even as far as our voting that we did every week he was we'll get to that yeah I mean often you know he probably deserved more points than he got I it's really difficult this one with Nico

[00:33:31] and I thought about it a lot because I thought he had a really good year and I think his numbers would even suggest that he had a better year on tricest and maybe goal-keeking percentage

[00:33:42] and even his try output but it just didn't feel the same and I don't know why that is and I haven't been able to figure it out I think it's because of less wins yeah and I have to double down on what

[00:33:53] you just said is goal-keeking was fantastic but I think that's what it is Josh less wins means we're looking at him and the team a bit differently we're looking at it through a different prism

[00:34:02] yeah don't forget before we got to that Cowboys game last year we were winning everything yes we barely lost yeah this year was different and but this thing is like even in that Cowboys lost last year he was incredible he was I think people forget that

[00:34:15] sometimes what how good he was in that game and if he had his teammates do their job we win that but anyway I'm not gonna get into it he was he was elite in that I think it's harsh that we

[00:34:24] sometimes judge him on like a miss field goal opportunity when yeah he can play great for 70 minutes or 75 minutes and then I know he's paid to ice games and that's why he's on massive

[00:34:36] money but I think it can just be so harsh sometimes on where we are on him when he just he's so good so much of the time but that small time is where he gets he gets pelters for well

[00:34:47] I think the other issue there and we've talked about it is other guys need to step up because you're right after that Risters game every eye from the chronology fans from the media

[00:35:00] are on this poor guy he's on the field and he's shattered I'm looking at Nico going I'm not looking at anyone else I expected him to be the light at the end of the tunnel

[00:35:10] which I still believe he is but if Blake Brailey in this instance Conor Tracy Braden Trindle step up in their spine rolls he doesn't need to do that well it's not so much

[00:35:20] doesn't need it we can look at those guys and go we're not doing that 100 so that's why we're all eyes on Nico like yeah he's the best player but if no one else is stepping up and

[00:35:31] they would certainly not then we have to rely on this guy we have no choice for sure yeah that's a good point well without all that being said I'm going to agree with you with 7.5 it's probably again

[00:35:42] I'm probably doing what I'm complaining about and being harsh on him because he probably was an 8.5 this year really it doesn't feel right giving him that score so I think it's 7.5 probably lands somewhere in the middle it's still a great year I think he's still had

[00:35:59] a really good year and I still don't think we're anywhere near his best football and with the right pieces around him he is a premiership winning 7 yeah I truly believe that but he needs some help

[00:36:11] and we've been saying that for a while now he just needs a couple of guys to go with him yeah do you think you before last was close to what the best could be for Nico or is he above that

[00:36:22] oh he's above that really yeah okay yeah I don't think that's anywhere near his potential in the Daly M year yeah okay I think he can be way better than that and I think that's what I think

[00:36:32] I love about him so much is when you hear him talk about himself in his game he's never satisfied and the best are like that even if you recall if you've watched the Daly M's when he was present

[00:36:44] I think he was presenting it or being asked about he's like I know I'm not getting to this year and you're kind of chuckled but you know that would have burned him because he wants he would

[00:36:51] want to win that every year yeah and he still came third with what everyone's saying was a was a substandard year and he missed four games yeah so if you probably if he plays those games he probably

[00:37:00] wins it again and we're probably higher up a ladder 100% yeah we're looking forward to Nico 2024 that's for sure uh next up the guy who I thought had a hell of a year he played 25 games all 25 games

[00:37:13] he scored 13 tries I just thought overall potentially career probably career best season and that is Sione Katoa our winger I thought he was extremely reliable in years gone by you would say

[00:37:28] you know he might be shaking under the high ball shaking in D I thought that was a vast improvement this year not exactly perfect but big improvement I love the fact that he now has the

[00:37:38] ability to run straight he still bounces around when he wants to but he has the ability to run straight get us out of the bad territory and he's hungry for work plays above his weight scores some

[00:37:51] amazing tries try as it not many others could score and I think he's an important piece of the puzzle yeah career best I'll definitely give him an eight I want to go higher I'm not but I'll

[00:38:02] give him an eight I was really excited by the football he played and I've been a Sione guy for a long time but he's never been like my favorite guy but this year he really impressed me I just

[00:38:15] saw the growth yeah and we'll get to some of his teammates where you can maybe see them stepping back a little and maybe that's why he was so glaring to me that he was going forward

[00:38:26] in his performances it looked like he had a really good off season and he learned some things under the coach particularly defensively strong eight for me for Sione Cattore yeah I agree completely career best year solidified himself as the best winger at the club I think

[00:38:45] might not have scored as many tries but we also don't go down his edges often super reliable tough courageous just looking for work all the time coming in to help defensively

[00:38:56] I can't speak highly enough of Sione I love him so much and from the moment he came in when he was in the 20s and when he came into first grade like you just want this guy to do well because he's just

[00:39:06] got that big smile and he always looks happy and always celebrating with the boys when we score I'm going to give him an 8.5 I thought he was really really good this year

[00:39:17] I got the chance to talk to him for the first time one-on-one on the show this year and I think from memory I was taller than him I was I was really surprised that like most of these guys

[00:39:27] surprised me when you're standing next to them like you stand next to Will Kennedy and he towers over you you stand next to Nico he towers over you with Sione he's a pretty small guy he might be one

[00:39:36] of the smallest guys in the club but he obviously doesn't play that way I know that there's a thing where you want your wingers tall there were probably a couple times where he was out

[00:39:45] leapt there's not a lot you can do about that if you're gonna stick with someone who you think is the guy well you can't make them taller so I love the fact that he plays above his weight

[00:39:55] those are the kind of guys that fans get behind who they might not be the most athletically gifted but they give you a hundred percent it clearly loves the club the club love him I want him to

[00:40:04] stay until he retires and the talk of him being someone that would get replaced by one of these younger wingers like absolutely astounds me I wouldn't have many other guys ahead of

[00:40:14] Sione and I've obviously got my shy glasses on there but I just love the guy last time before we take a break at Josh and that is Oregon Cofusi end up playing 19 games he started 11 of those

[00:40:26] had a mixed season there were some real highlights and there was some real lowlights is a young prop has experience at the top level more than a lot of the other guys have in the team

[00:40:37] in grand finals and internationals he's got size on his side I'm definitely looking for more next season I don't think it's a case of just put a line through him he's done

[00:40:48] like a lot of the criticism I've seen of him I think I need to give the guy another chance at a year and having a great year and I hear really good things about him through the club but through

[00:41:00] people associated with the club there is an upside to what we've seen I think it is best and we've seen it this year he can be really dominating he's got a nice offload he can be steady in

[00:41:12] defense the low thing I'm talking about is there was a couple of games there where he just was ineffective and there were certain circumstances there like periods where we didn't have the ball

[00:41:23] and we're judging him on his lack of meters and that kind of stuff at the end of the day whether you think the stats lie don't lie if you've made 12 meters in a match

[00:41:32] you're not really looking for the ball yes and I can get over that I am over that I want to see him mix it with the best in our club I think that he has the ability to be

[00:41:41] in the 17 no doubt the coach thinks that he's played 19 games but someone definitely needs to wind him up someone needs to make him a bit angrier someone needs to get him in the zone

[00:41:52] because I think on average when he'd come on the field he was just in work mode which is fine we're in that position of a middle forward prop we need you at a higher level yes I'll give

[00:42:05] our again I give him a six but I think there is a upside there I agree and I think I think we saw the best of him at the start of the year I think he's first five games I was really happy with him

[00:42:17] really impressed and then I don't know if something happened or if he was carrying some injuries before he actually did get injured but he just kind of plateaued a little bit for mine

[00:42:26] he wasn't awful there were a couple of games where he wasn't good I don't think he was anywhere near the problem kind of went missing yeah so it wasn't like he had stinker games yeah

[00:42:35] which is great but also please don't go missing like he didn't make many errors he just didn't impact the game enough I think he finished I think he started and finished strong I think

[00:42:44] he's middle of the year he was just not enough for me and I think we've also got a factor in that he played a lot of football in the last 18 months I think he would have played nearly

[00:42:54] every game for paramata played a grand final and then he went and played for his country then he's gone straight into an offseason at a new club and then back back into it again so I think

[00:43:03] man we'll see we'll see how he comes back on this preseason we've got a bit of a rest he can get away from from everything but we will need to see something next year he's not gonna I'm not

[00:43:13] letting him off just because of that so I'm gonna give him a five that's your lowest score so far I believe for the coach and we might talk about him later on for the coach going into season three

[00:43:24] off two successful seasons but not anywhere near where he wanted to finish I get the feeling the coach is going to start mixing up a little bit yes I agree I get the feeling that not every spot

[00:43:35] is guaranteed I get the feeling that this summer will be about revving up the Oregon Cofuses and saying look this is you at your best this is you at your not best let's get you here this

[00:43:46] is how we're gonna do it the coach is here to win the coach well on a long-term deal has a reputation to keep and the more wins he gets the better of the reputation and he wants the best out of these

[00:43:58] players and I think Oregon is a perfect example if you find yourself down at Shark Park over summer he'll be sweating it up we're ripping in yeah and that's a good point you make because

[00:44:10] when coaches kind of come in or if they change soles like that's not a one-year thing that's like we're going to try this you know it's a multiple-year type of situation so now that he's

[00:44:20] he's had that two years now of a certain style with a certain certain squad that is used fairly consistently I think now is the time for a bit of a shake up you never want to kind of less

[00:44:30] wrestling your laurels and you don't want to do the same thing for too long so I think now I think we'll see a slight change in personnel coming into the year after with a lot of guys

[00:44:41] coming off contract so I think we'll see in the next 18 months it's going to be huge for the club in terms of roster play style we started to see it this year he last year he didn't drop anyone

[00:44:52] didn't make any changes it was pretty much the same squad bowing injuries we saw changes this year and we saw droppings this year and I think we'll see more of that next season depending on how

[00:45:02] results and and how we're going all right Josh let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll get into the second half of the squad and we will also reveal who our 2023

[00:45:13] shark cast player of the year is so stick with us and back after this short break Dyson Logistics have been on board with Shark Cast since day one and because of that and their excellent service we are proud to be associated with them Dyson Logistics provides tailored

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[00:47:00] the Royal Moteo Club in Ford Hacking Jason Hawes at Crips and Crips real estate you may have just heard some of their plugs please go support them if and when you can I'm with Josh Bolling we're going through the player review for the season

[00:47:13] and we've done about half the team already some have been star-studded some less so given the year that was should point out if you want to debate this with us drop us a line sharkcarspod at

[00:47:24] gmail.com at Shark Cast pod on the socials there's a bit of mail to get to it's not pressing with all respect so we'll get to that when we can the episode is a little bit slower in

[00:47:36] the off season but we'll still be giving you episodes when we can so if you feel like dropping us a line please do and we'll get to some of your statements next up Josh we have fullback Will

[00:47:48] Kennedy will was having a great year until he got injured and he played 19 games he scored 14 tries he was involved in a bunch more that's for sure what's interesting to me

[00:48:04] Josh is that he didn't win the shark's player of the year I don't think he featured he might have had some dallying points but I didn't always see him on the coverage too much but what I can tell you

[00:48:15] is that the six or seven regulars on Shark Cast pod tallied our votes week in week out three two ones we did this for every game and we took a lot of pride in what we did doing this and I

[00:48:28] can tell you that will kennedy is the shark cast 2023 player of the year and it wasn't even close we will get to will and let him know about that maybe give him a little trophy or something

[00:48:44] but will kennedy had 63 more votes than the next best which was cam mckinnis with 102 votes so will kennedy just dominated the year even though he only played 19 games and if we cast

[00:49:02] our mind back to those 19 games he was really really good he fit into the system so well he was safe he was reliable he was creative it was a major bummer that he missed the final this

[00:49:15] year because if will kennedy plays in that rooster's game who knows it kind of traces okay but yeah who knows what would have happened if he'd played the last few games he was out for a while

[00:49:24] obviously towards the end of the year it was a major bummer's what i'm trying to say but congratulations to will kennedy for winning that esteemed award which we've only brought back for the first time

[00:49:33] in a while and cam mckinnis was second nicoe heinz third britain nicola and bradon trindle also in the top five so it won't go through the whole list but will kennedy was our player of the

[00:49:44] year josh i thought he was certainly close to our best for me personally i would have him up there with the nicoe heinz he was very integral piece of the puzzle probably the only negative i need to

[00:49:57] say is that i want to maybe see him run a bit stronger when he gets the ball from a kick a kick return if you will i've got to disagree you can disagree when it's your time saw vast

[00:50:09] improvements with that and i saw vast improvements with his defense as well his last man standing defense but now you can disagree i actually i'll say i'll give will a strong eight eight

[00:50:19] out ten for me strong eight out ten his running game and his kick returns were the strongest they've ever been and i thought he looked stronger he looked he looked bigger but not at an expense

[00:50:31] of his pace or his elusiveness but i found him his kick returns generally he was always straight back up the guts oh he was straight back up there but i think i just want to see him

[00:50:44] because i think at the moment he's in the close to elite full bucks he's in your list with the other guys that you love but i think that attribute of his is probably his weakest compared to those

[00:50:54] guys who sure their strength sure and if i can't get a lot more out of him from that that's fine but i think that's where he needs to improve that's all i'm saying yeah his game is i mean

[00:51:05] it's not near perfect but it's very very high class of football he's a very well-rounded absolutely i guess i'm just saying if i could make him into the 10 out of 10 i think that's

[00:51:14] where he would do it sure beat two or three guys he'd bust through them he's definitely trying he's not showing away from it i just love his uh his work ethic i think is my favorite part about

[00:51:25] will which is pro and i think it's an underrated aspect of his game that he is just everywhere all the time and one of my criticisms previously was that he wasn't a great support full back

[00:51:36] in the ruck foreign offload not necessarily for the runaway try always being around the ruck if if someone was looking for an offload he tended to not be there and i think in his last year

[00:51:47] he's really improved that um because even if it sneaks in extra 10 meters that's what he's there for that's what he should be doing because Blake can't do it he's got to be a dummy half

[00:51:56] you don't your halves doing that it's got to be your full back i think all elements of his game improved absolutely yeah and i think it was again i think career best year like we may look back on a

[00:52:06] year or two different of seasons where he's been breakout and you've gone wow but this year he was just really strong and he did have some criticism in the off season about his defense i thought we

[00:52:19] saw a big improvement it was better it was better yeah that's probably where i would say his his biggest biggest improvement needs to come is his defense more so his actual his actual

[00:52:28] tackling not so much as reads like he sets up our line quite well yeah but actually when he gets through like james sedesco i'd say a 50 time will shut down a play yeah and i think will's gone from

[00:52:41] like you know two percent to i'm making this up but like the 25 percent like he was a big improvement it was a couple times where he stops tries yeah and look full backs they're

[00:52:51] not going to stop every try and half the time it's an impossible task but he definitely improved that which was my biggest thing for him and it's just such a shame that he got injured right when

[00:53:00] he was starting to just just pick up the pace a little bit and really start to escalate his season so i'm just hoping for this year please to let him get through a season to the football gods

[00:53:11] let him come into a final series fit yeah and i think we'll just see maybe that's the difference between our finals game like our two finals seasons have been impacted with our most arguably

[00:53:23] our second most important player hasn't been there hasn't been fit and with kind of tracy this year we'll get to kind of but let's not forget in that game against the roosters he was coming into that

[00:53:32] with an injury where he could barely walk and he got through it and he played okay it was fine but without your number one there literally yeah i'd like to see that a fit number one at least

[00:53:42] uh what'd you give him an eight i'm going to give him an 8.5 beautiful okay that's our player of the year shark us pod player of the year will kennedy uh next up someone who ranks really

[00:53:52] high and i've got a feeling you and i are going to rank him very highly as well and that is cameron mckinnis he played 23 games for us he started 14 of those he made a thousand million hundred

[00:54:04] billion tackles including in one game and so josh is just pointing out he made 818 tackles he missed 29 that's ridiculous yeah so you guys know what cam does it's it's required it's needed super happy he's a shark when we bought him i didn't really realize what we were getting

[00:54:25] i i knew his style and i'd watched him obviously he obviously when you put on our jersey you're going to watch him a lot differently and i didn't really expect this as particularly

[00:54:35] what two years on the last year was good this year is better so next year is looking pretty scary and we both agree that he should be our starting lock i would make him captain so would i he would

[00:54:46] make him captain too i have no hesitation in saying that i love dale fenukin as a leader i love nico heins as a leader if nico heins wants to be captain if he feels like it's going to help his

[00:54:56] game take it but i feel like i want less burden on nico than than more we know he'd sit here and go no no it's fine i love doing it i've been on up yeah sure i just think cam mckinnis is your guy

[00:55:08] if he can physically do it i want to see him play 80 minutes you bring him off when the game blows out yeah if it should blow out no worries but huge admire of what he's done you know we sent

[00:55:18] it on the pod the fact he had to make all those tackles in that game was was not okay but it was amazing that he did that yeah i'm gonna give cam a nine if i if i was to point any negativity

[00:55:31] out or any criticism it would be redundant to be honest it wasn't a 10 just because 10 is really really really special Andrew johns type stuff kind of but he's a nine obviously i won't

[00:55:42] blame you i'll probably blame clinton cameron jad in tk for him not being our player of the year as much as i loved will and how a great year he had i thought cam mckinnis was our best player by

[00:55:54] the length of the straight and there's not much more i can say because i've said it every single podcast i've been on how much i love this guy you're a cam guy i'm a cam guy i have been

[00:56:03] since before he signed with us i've always loved mckinnis and i nearly fell out of my chair the day that i saw that we'd signed him and had to like convince people i'm like this guy is going to

[00:56:12] be incredible for us um and i'm so glad that he has been and that he's overcome that horrendous knee injury that he suffered and he's gotten two really good years pumped out now um nearly played

[00:56:26] every game both years there's uh the defensive work that he does every single week the cleanup that he does the one-on-one tackles that he makes i love the hit ups the hit ups season

[00:56:36] isn't maniac yeah i really like them and they got better like he the more he played the stronger he got he was starting to break tackles he they're not they're not for the main part what i would call

[00:56:47] dumb hit ups like just you know you're on your line and somebody hits it up you just you just run towards eight guys yeah it looks like he does that sometimes but he's always making meters he

[00:56:58] doesn't get pushed back and he is a smaller man and and and he's hard to stop and yeah we got three tries this year um which was an improvement on last year he played with a broken hand yeah

[00:57:14] with a game yeah it came back early from that said broken hand yeah there's so much to like about him off the field i talk about off field a little bit more than i want because i don't think necessarily

[00:57:25] a player should be judged by off the field because off the field you can do whatever you want you know within reason but the fact that he's such a stand-up citizen the fact that the stuff

[00:57:35] he does for his for his child with autism and that kind of stuff it's just so admirable on top of the fact that he's just this wonderful player he's the full package for me and yeah i can't believe

[00:57:49] that that filthy club let him go can you imagine him under flano flano just be ropeable now go hang on we had cam you let him go our captain the most oddball decision from an oddball club

[00:58:00] that i i think by the time that cam's done his career at the shark i wouldn't be surprised if he's in my top five of all time i just think the world of him i hope he plays for 10 more years until

[00:58:12] he's 40 something i would love to see him hold up a trophy so many guys in the in the game in general deserve one can you just imagine they look on his face and he'd probably been teased so

[00:58:22] he's just that kind of guy it's so emotionally invested absolutely with all that being said i'm giving him a nine as well cool next up this gentleman won't be getting a nine but that's okay

[00:58:31] because he's been nine in the past he wasn't nine this year and that is matt moeyland who played 20 games and started 18 of them and as the year went on it got worse and worse for matt i thought for the

[00:58:48] most part the effort was there i think as the sort of last game or two was coming around he looked like he was done it doesn't mean he stopped trying but when you're done it's hard

[00:59:00] to make those tackles you know yeah matt matt moeyland such an interesting story man like you not even the eagorn vibe but just in in in his career at times you won't have seen a better

[00:59:11] attacking player like just so silky so smart so skillful i thought he's first year under kreg fitz gibbon he was terrific i thought he defended his butt off for a guy who that's not a strong point

[00:59:25] and i thought he conflated nick ohinds really well we started the season without nick oh who's with trindle trindle was the star and from there on it just kind of went downhill for matt and

[00:59:37] got to the point where that left side was really leaking and obviously he was heavily involved in that leaking he wasn't completely to blame and i hope that people recognize that eventually the coach made the call and he he dropped him and from all reports josh moeyland

[00:59:55] took it pretty well he kept turning up training he kept working hard we saw him come back in for a game at some point tonight's game and that didn't go great for him but they didn't just pick him

[01:00:09] for the sake of it like he was picked because he was performing at training and so his attitude's good they love him as a as a person at the club i can tell you right now he's on track to sticking

[01:00:19] around the club okay the overseas office i believe just haven't worked out for whatever reason at the moment as we record he'll be a shark going to next year now a lot of things can happen in the

[01:00:31] off season a team can say oh we wouldn't mind having him starting or having him for depth that's up to him what he wants to do but as we talk would definitely suggest he'll be a shark

[01:00:41] next year i don't think he will be even close to starting the season in first grade but maybe the idea is just he'll be a depth player i don't know if he'll play for the jets he might he might just

[01:00:55] be a perennial 18th man person he might just be on the fringe but at the moment that's where he's going to be but anyway i i thought that yeah as the season went longer matt season got worse

[01:01:04] for him i'll give him i'll give him a five i don't want to go too far below that for different reasons i thought that there were games when he played to a suitable level and as i said about

[01:01:16] the defense it wasn't all on him it was guys around him as well but certainly not a great year for matt more than i give him a five yeah yeah i think that's fair i don't think he was our

[01:01:25] worst player this year he wasn't great um i thought he was also made to be the scapegoat a lot of the time for things that where he was either contributing to or maybe not even necessarily

[01:01:36] his fault but matt's always been someone that's been easy to smash for whatever reason he's always there's always been something about him in his career where people have found it easy to give him

[01:01:48] a bit of stick right there wrongly it's disappointing because of the year he had last year when he was so good and so crucial to the way we played to the point where he

[01:01:56] was almost a centerpiece of our attack last year more so than nico yeah people either forget that or they don't want to acknowledge it i know we can't live in the past but his first season

[01:02:06] under craig feats gibbon was stellar like it was good yeah genuinely yeah and i think we kind of probably just expected that again and maybe that was why it was harder to take when he wasn't at

[01:02:17] that standard having said that no one was really this year but i think the right call was made at the end of the day to drop him for his sake and for the team's sake and if he's sticking around

[01:02:27] he's sticking around if you know there's if trindle gets hurt if all these people get hurt yeah you could just throw him in you could have worse you could there's many worse options

[01:02:39] okay in the lrl i agree um as a backup but i think like you said i don't think he will be in the 17 come round one next year if he's still here yeah well said well said i'm going to

[01:02:51] give him a five as well would you expect him or want him to play for the jets and when i say that hear me out i'm not saying like it's a bad thing to play for them i mean more from a

[01:03:02] older footballer doesn't need to can find an injury doesn't need to for a lot of reasons like would you want him to or or not or do you have an opinion on it he wouldn't for me he

[01:03:13] doesn't have to you've got runs on the board if it came to a point where he was out for 10 weeks then i think you'd maybe look at say let's just get him in there just get the legs going again

[01:03:22] but if it was going to be a consistent thing where he's 18th man he's in around the squad close enough he doesn't need to play but yeah if it was going on an extended period where trindle or dykes

[01:03:32] or whoever it is is in six and they're playing well and it's been a long time you probably want to give him a couple of games just to keep him match fit and fresh and i'm saying this without

[01:03:41] any knowledge about this subject i think there might even be an option for him to unofficially take on more of a leadership in adverticom as coaching role is a smart footballer yeah he can

[01:03:54] teach the guys a lot of things and maybe it won't be i'm going to teach trindle maybe it's the flag guys or maybe it's just the jets guys like there might be a role for him where okay look we're

[01:04:06] paying you this amount of money we want you to earn your keep yeah this is how you're gonna do it and i think it's an injury i think it would be an interesting move for him

[01:04:14] and it could lead to other things as well so we'll see that's if he's still gonna be the club but i can tell you that if you're thinking that he's left the club he definitely has not left the club

[01:04:24] next up we have ronaldo mulatalo played 23 games scored 21 tries in a season which equals my boyfriend valentine home's his effort on the fringe of looking at that josh the bare bones

[01:04:39] wow all those tries you'd say what an amazing season i and i feel like you are not going to say that because it wasn't an amazing season for ronaldo there were highs and lows more lows than what we

[01:04:51] probably expected and i think that next year will be a much brighter year for ronaldo i think it kind of needs to be it doesn't mean that he was in any way bottom of the barrel winger

[01:05:04] in the rl like he was fantastic at times no doubt about it but there are a few things creeping into his game which i just wasn't happy with and they were the errors and the bad defensive reads mainly

[01:05:16] and they were just sort of very simple reads he got wrong there was it the first touch in the rooster's game and he just dropped the ball with the kick brain fades that stuff's just

[01:05:28] not good enough for a guy at his level that's where i was a little bit let down as a fan by his performances there are a lot of great tries a lot of great moments but again i was sort of

[01:05:39] expecting a ronaldo to be around an eight and a half nine i'll probably look at giving him a six and a half and i'm a huge fan again we talk about off the field does so much for the

[01:05:49] club that people don't even realize good human really good player but i feel like and maybe it was even a case of and i hate saying this about players but maybe he was coasting a little bit

[01:06:00] use whatever word you want to use he kind of knew that he was going to be picked every week yeah and not saying he shouldn't be picked every week because he's a very very good winger but

[01:06:09] yeah i was a little bit disappointed with ronaldo this year and i expect a lot more next year yeah i mean just looking now just on some other stats and everything was down on last year

[01:06:19] his tackle breaks were down his meters were down even his average even though he scored a lot of tries a lot of line breaks they were down besides the tries sorry his line breaks down

[01:06:29] offloads even his hit ups like just everything was at a lesser level and his tackling was worse made less tackles and was it worse effectiveness so by saying that wasn't by any means a terrible

[01:06:44] year no i just think like you said it was a bit of a middle of the middle of the way sort of year where i think he do you think he was playing injured for a lot of the year i don't know he might

[01:06:56] have been and we're not necessarily privy to all that and and if that was the case then it would have been a good year for him if he's playing injured well good on you like i was that was a

[01:07:04] good effort i don't think injuries make you drop that first ball against no it doesn't and just general handling he's never agreeing great with his hands like he's always going to be one of those guys probably going to make 25 30 every year we saw some bomb tries we saw

[01:07:18] some really poor areas that led directly to tries and that warriors game where he dropped an absolute sitter that led directly to six points yeah and i think that they are things that he will learn

[01:07:30] from ultimately like you may not see it the next week but i think that he's a you know he's still a young guy he's still for where he's at in his career going tremendous yeah so there's a big

[01:07:41] upside to rinaldo but yeah i just thought that i thought a katala absolutely owned in this year as a winger yeah but b i just i thought it might be a breakout year for him or another breakout

[01:07:56] year for him and it wasn't there was a step back i only say a small step back but i wouldn't have thought i would be saying those words i think i think a humbling for him this year has been

[01:08:05] a good thing because he's been easy quite uh and i just want to say arrogant i mean confident arrogant um and he's a guy that's in the face of the opposition and he talks a lot of smack but

[01:08:16] he takes it too i think we saw less of that because of the performances i think yeah because he knows yeah he's not the sort of athlete that carries on after he makes the error yeah like he kind of

[01:08:29] owns it yes i like that about him absolutely but and i also like that he's aggressive and he's in the face of the opposition and he's firing up the crowd because we don't have many

[01:08:37] players like that on our side and that's been a criticism from us of our front rowers that are too they're too nice you just got to back it up that's all you just got to back it up and

[01:08:45] to his credit most of his career he has absolutely but i think this year it might have been a blessing in disguise to have a bit of a down year and a bit of a humbling

[01:08:54] those little one percent areas like scoring tries that we should that he should have scored sorry that yeah he bombed and i can assure you the coaching staff let him know about it

[01:09:03] and i don't know if they come back to it or not they probably don't it's probably a thing where he needs to kind of own it and move on and learn from it but i can assure you that

[01:09:11] when he bombs a try he has a conversation on the following day on the monday where like he gets called in and they talk about it they everything is addressed it's not like absolutely

[01:09:21] but it's letting people in who don't know that and i'm sure the vast majority of you do but even in case if you're not wondering i mean i think sometimes that coaches a reputation of being a

[01:09:30] bit quiet or whatever but he'll rip and tear at them when needed and and if a player gives away a trial like that against the warrigors the coach and the staff i dare say even some of the players

[01:09:43] will let the player know about it so looking for a big year for another next year certainly not not below standard or anything it was just a step back no i worry was i'm giving you was up

[01:09:54] pretty high yeah so it's a you can only go down really well i was hoping to go up but he did go probably a nine for me last year yeah that's the thing it's like yeah where how do you go

[01:10:06] stay persistent or do you take it didn't and he didn't he went down so i'm going down to a six okay next up we have one of our better players played all 25 games and has become one

[01:10:19] of our most consistent footballers and that is britain nicker i thought his season was almost as good as last year or the finish of last year if you pile that in together it's a great package

[01:10:32] i thought that for the majority of this year he was there he was doing things he was offensively good defensively good he wasn't going missing like he had in the past a little bit

[01:10:43] and i thought it was a really big piece of the puzzle this year and moving forward and one of the elite second rowers really glad he's one of ours really glad he's stuck around and yeah i thought

[01:10:55] brit was just integral into a lot of things that we do and i think he a lot of what he does also isn't spoken about like he'll run the lines that everyone talks about but then he'll run the

[01:11:06] decoy lines that no one talks about yeah but they're just as important really good defensively and still growing like still fairly young in his career with a lot of time left

[01:11:19] and i yeah i thought he was one of our better players i'll give britain an eight out of ten okay i'm going to take that one step further i think brit and akora was the best second

[01:11:30] rower in the comp this year and i thought he was absolutely robbed of the daly em second row of the year i was in a group chat with a couple of friends and we were going over the second row of

[01:11:41] the year and they're like not they weren't all sharks fans and they were putting up all the numbers of these people and i was like hang on you haven't even gotten to call her up here

[01:11:49] so she went down and did some digging and went oh wow he blows everyone out of the water besides maybe tries yeah he's tackled he's tackled more than any second rower he tackled at a high

[01:11:59] percentage his run meters i think were in the top three his tries were up there um penalties were low i thought he was without question a career best year it goes without saying by being the best

[01:12:12] second rower and you've got some almighty second rowers in this comp but i would not trade him for one single second rower on the planet i think he's incredible and we're so undervalued i think

[01:12:23] we've undervalued how good he is as a fan base although he's exceptional this year he maybe tailed off a tiny bit at the end so he was playing with injury towards the end which

[01:12:32] which was not really spoken of but he he was hurt was very brave in the way play because yeah his game didn't really deteriorate it's more just stabilized sort of yeah yeah but that was due to injury but he still played on like weeks where he wasn't training

[01:12:46] and played every game yeah yeah and we made nearly 900 tackles in a year like just an absolute weapon and i think if he can go to the next level next year then it's more we're

[01:12:59] getting the question for me i know this is so biased but talking daly m period that's why that's his next level if he can if he can grow on this year he's that good so i want to see

[01:13:10] his combo with the halves improve even more like it's good right now but i do want to see it grow because i think he's that as you say important to what's going on

[01:13:20] he can change a game and you can't say that about all second rows no some of them are real plotters and that's what they're there to do is to plot along this guy is an elite athlete and

[01:13:31] and i'm i'm happy that he's starting to see that within himself you can tell hey yeah yeah like it's universally known how withdrawn he is in himself from the media and from the

[01:13:42] rugby league world like when you see him with his teammates and his family like he's just a regular guy but he does withdraw a little bit from the star stuff which is you know admirable in its own

[01:13:50] way but yeah the world is starting to catch on you know even your your andrew johnson's and those guys commentators they they rave on about him and rightly so and that exposes him to the big picture

[01:14:02] and but they only rave on him about his great line runs which is great but it's everything else in his game like his defense is just for how shoddy we've been in defense this year that like

[01:14:13] for him to be that good in a defensive system that hasn't been that successful it's just really admirable and i'm giving him a nine okay beauty next up we have jessie ramey who played

[01:14:24] 25 games as well scored 11 tries which is a lot for him i thought jessie overall season long was one of our more consistent players i saw improvement in a lot of things particularly

[01:14:37] disappoint and i still think he can improve on what he's doing but i'm really happy where he's at he's highly involved whether fans rely realize that or not like just watch him closely he's

[01:14:50] highly involved on and off the ball and i thought defensively his his game improved this year and it's really important to have good defending centers and i really really happy with

[01:15:05] just just him in general and and you can see off the field is matured a lot he's got a couple of kids now he's happy in the community he's living in and yeah i give jessie uh i give him an eight

[01:15:20] actually give me an eight out of ten i thought he started quite poor to start the year his first month or so i was worried because there was all the news about the losing the weight

[01:15:30] he lost the big chest and you know i was concerned about that i thought all that was a bit ott to be honest there's a talk about the weight for sure for sure and it was um but then when i started seeing

[01:15:40] it in and action i was like oh no and then he just kind of slowly like just small steps and then at the end of the year he was like really consistent and really good and like you said he

[01:15:51] involved in so much like it takes a lot of the tough carries does a lot of work off the ball great output try wise this year um i still think we underuse him and i still think we do too many

[01:16:03] dumb crash players when he's running right at someone and he's catching the ball with two blokes whacking him yeah you can see when he gets early ball he's at his most creative and

[01:16:11] destructive and i think that's the key he needs early ball and we've been saying that for what five years yeah just he needs early ball he's one of those centers and i'm looking for him to improve

[01:16:22] again next year i mean i'm gonna give him a i'm gonna give him an eight um but but like you said he could be it could play for new south wales yeah he's that good he's got a he's got to tinker a few

[01:16:31] things and just get that and he did to his credit get that silly penalty out of his game i thought for the most part this year yeah there's a lot more disciplined and mature i think overall

[01:16:40] he's like okay he might have started a bit shaky but his consistency when he gets into that groove is really good like you've seen it year on now like where it might be five good games

[01:16:51] and then but i thought this year was close to 20 good games yeah out of the 25 yeah in a row kind of thing so i think he's become one of our more reliable players and you probably wouldn't have

[01:17:02] expected to say that not the start of the year no yeah so i think he's a guy that yeah he's just continuing learning and yeah i think once he finds his groove he doesn't really lose it

[01:17:13] but he's like he can take him a while if he hasn't got it he usually starts season slow but then once he finds his form he tends to not fall it doesn't go bad again he doesn't lose it

[01:17:24] yeah all right next up we have big toby rudolf he played 15 games mostly with a bunged up toe poor bugger i believe actually i'm not sure last i heard that they were waiting to see whether

[01:17:35] they're gonna operate on the toe i think he's been having a good time in germany and yeah so maybe but i think they were waiting to see whether it was one of those things that

[01:17:44] could heal without sure playing every week that was the word i got last week from someone in the club so see what happens with toby at his he's toro but uh i am going to say toby's effort

[01:17:55] was fantastic and and i think this is probably the season i have respected him the most as a player i thought that at times he was really dominant i thought that he at times stamped

[01:18:09] his you know his name on the game i will also back that up by saying that and i've said this a lot on the podcast that i kind of want more from toby so while i'll say all the good stuff about him

[01:18:21] i just need a bit more and it's for a few different reasons josh the position he's playing starting prop the money he's on which bless him deserves every cent because that's what he got

[01:18:31] but he's on a really good contract and i guess i just need a bigger impact from my starting props i thought he had a good year but there's just times where i'm watching him and i just want

[01:18:43] more and i don't know if i'm ever gonna get what i want he's a tough bugger he's all hard when he's at his best he's pretty good he doesn't go down to like a five out of ten or anything when he's

[01:18:59] not at his best he just sort of hovers around the the six and a half maybe six and a half and that's not where i need a starting prop to be there's arguments about whether he plays too long

[01:19:11] which is a coaching thing maybe i need to see him coming off the bench and playing shortest ints maybe that's what i'm not happy with maybe he should i think we've talked about this talking about toby in the summer about what he should be doing next year

[01:19:24] but just quickly maybe that's my thing maybe he's not my starting prop but he's in my 17 and he comes off the bench i'm not sure i'm going to give toby a seven out of ten

[01:19:36] and that's kind of how i think of him as a player and that's not bad by any means but if you're my highest paid prop more or less and you're my starting prop i kind of want to have you in my

[01:19:49] eighth eight and a half okay toby complex with toby yeah i'm just i was literally about to say toby is an enigma for me because i don't quite know where where his ceiling is and i don't know if he's

[01:20:03] at it i'm worried he's at it yeah but i could be completely wrong but then there's times where i'm so impressed with him and i love him and i'm like this guy's so good and it's moments yeah but i need

[01:20:15] more than moments absolutely yeah i don't mind having a toby root off my team if i have a junior paulo or a pain haste comp like he would be perfect in with that yeah so a lot of what we're talking

[01:20:26] about isn't necessarily his fault it's more the position he is in yes and then the people around him and their roles it's all it gets a bit skew if a bit hard to see it's a bit murky because it's

[01:20:37] like well yeah if we had one of those guys he doesn't even have to be that elite no someone just in obviously that style because toby is just more of a workhorse he's he's got the uh

[01:20:49] the obviously is tough but he's got the he's got the brutality in him yeah and we see it as you say in moments but for me he's more of the workhorse and that you need you need that absolutely yeah

[01:21:00] but i guess i almost see him in like a and i hope this doesn't become a quote or whatever but i see him almost in an aiden tollman kind of way just stole the thought out of my brain right

[01:21:11] and then again we love aiden tollman yeah we needed people later role yeah but then you look at salary cap then you look at time on field then you look at positions and that's where for me

[01:21:22] it gets a bit murky with toby yeah and i think my most frustrating thing about toby is he doesn't make many errors when he does it like at the most crucial time in a game ever and it's like we're

[01:21:34] coming out of our end and it's the 78th minute in a final and he drops the ball in the play of the ball and it's just like it doesn't like i would rather someone that made 20

[01:21:44] 20 or 30 errors a year but they were like you know trying something whatever or it doesn't make eight but all eight of them are like the worst ones you've ever seen and that's my thing with toby

[01:21:53] and i think a lot of that is fatigue yeah and maybe that comes back to too many minutes so maybe he's playing too many minutes maybe it's not you know in advertecom is his fault

[01:22:02] or there's a reason why there's yeah but what are you giving him i'm gonna give him a six but it's a strong six i think it's probably sounds harsher than it is because there's a couple of times

[01:22:14] during the year i think his defense is great i think that's like his best attribute like you see him sometimes where we're short on a right hand side yeah he saves him drives he just runs across and

[01:22:24] he's like in front of the second row almost on the sideline and he's like taking someone's legs out and it can't fault his effort i love that side of him where do you see him next year if

[01:22:32] you were the coach bench okay i think i think we saw his best um football was in his first year when he was coming off the bench i've said it like 20 times this episode but like 20 minute comes around

[01:22:43] or whatever and you see rudolf coming off the bench and you wind him up that's a different prospect to toby starting again and winding him up i don't know why it just is i mean i

[01:22:52] guess players are more fatigued yeah but you would not want to have him charging at you you when you were exhausted when your toby in that first 20 minutes and then someone's coming on

[01:23:02] and running at him yeah so maybe that's the key imagine him and rois coming on together the 25th minute i've seen it josh i've seen it you know what else i saw this is beautiful

[01:23:12] this is beautiful i've also seen hunt talakai and i think even toby coming off the bench and it's a beautiful thing we're up to seo ni talakai in the seo ni what did i say seo ni

[01:23:25] what's his name siffer siffer talakai of course it's been a long week yes talakai siffer talakai played 22 games all starting he played a large a bunch of that in the centers in left center

[01:23:41] for a while there was part of the defensive problem with matt moyland and tig wilson and i guess i won't leave ronald out of that equation as well but we saw a lot of pros amongst the cons

[01:23:57] with talakai and talakai is a guy that is really i think valuable to this club whether they know it whether the fans know it i'm not sure but as my opinion is i think that we can use him

[01:24:11] a whole lot better which we'll get to but i think that you look at a guy and he runs for you know close to 200 meters a game he's creative with his hands he can kick he's he's

[01:24:23] defensively tough like you wouldn't want to mess with him i think the the weakness there obviously is the defense it's against better teams when he's playing against lesser teams he's fine

[01:24:33] but the more skilful teams in the finals etc he gets found out a little bit i'm not even found out he just sort of can't compete with the turn and run and that kind of thing due to his size

[01:24:45] he's mobile to an extent but he's not joey manu he's not joey manu he's not particularly i mean he's quick for his for his weight or whatever but he's not the quickest center in the game

[01:24:56] and i think that's the problem and i think that that is why you will not see him too much next year in the centers on this year though i thought that he also with moyland was a bit of a target

[01:25:08] for some fans and some media outlets i thought he had a pretty good year there's an asterisk there because of the defense yeah and he again wasn't the sole reason like map moyland wasn't the sole

[01:25:21] reason but as a combination it got really ugly and that's not okay that's not good enough and for that reason i'm gonna give him i'm gonna give him it's i feel this is really harsh

[01:25:35] i'm gonna give him a six and a half out of ten i want to give him like a seven seven and a half but all i just think that the the defensive stuff at its worst was was horrific yeah and that's

[01:25:46] not on him 100 but he's also involved so i'm gonna give him a six and a half i want you to talk about his season but then i want to talk about next season i wish i could grade him on just one

[01:25:58] part of the game alone but i can't because i thought he's attacking or offense was incredible i thought it was really good he's got great hands got a great kick like you said uh set up

[01:26:08] brunado for a billion tries um scored a couple himself and just gets us out of trouble almost every set and doing things other centers weren't necessarily doing in attack yes so forget about the fact that he's afford playing the centers he was doing things the centers that other

[01:26:24] centers weren't doing well i think he had more try assist than a lot of halves let alone other centers that's just it's just that it was every time you thought he kind of we'd got that left

[01:26:35] edge sorted something would just go completely wrong and they would run through him or someone would get on the outside and he'd be diving and fall over and get a bit of shorts and they'll

[01:26:43] go on and that happened too many times and i think we got away with it for most of his time there over the last two seasons but i just don't think we could probably get through another

[01:26:53] season of it he could definitely do a job there if we need him to the injuries i think it's time now the experiment's over and i was very much started you think you're fine i was a sifera center guy

[01:27:05] but i think now it's like the experiment i think kind of run its course and the well is dry and i still want him in this side and i want him on the field as much as possible i just

[01:27:16] don't know where we get him and i know we've said a lot this guy's a good bench option so the bench has only got four spots and we've said about eight people that should be on the bench

[01:27:24] so fitz has got a lot of work to do over the summer um and i don't envy him next year next year i think he's got to be on the bench but i want him to have a lot of minutes as well yeah so i'm completely

[01:27:35] there with you i think that he's a bench middle middle for me but he obviously can i'm not going to say he should be the utility guy but if you go with four forwards then he probably is the

[01:27:43] utility guy i would have him as a as a middle forward benchy he could play second or we know he can play a bunch of places but you're right he needs to play big minutes he can't be doing

[01:27:52] 10 minute stints because he's got it in him obviously he's an 80 minute player i think then the argument comes up i'm just going to pick a name out of the hat or two names out of the hat

[01:28:02] you're looking at do i want to play talakai as a middle on the bench or do i want to have kufusi or even a gohun and i'm just picking two names of the guys that played maybe a bit

[01:28:13] less than the other guys last year or rocite pick whoever you want but that's going to be the big debate who misses out yeah if this is the notion we're going with i just think you put up on the

[01:28:26] whiteboard what was the problem is she well we didn't have the best go forward in the middle and our left edge was really leaky let's move talakai here yeah okay he's short in stature

[01:28:41] but he's hard to defend no matter where he is yeah middle edge whatever i think he becomes a meter eating middle you could say middle edge whatever you want to say it he just comes on the field

[01:28:51] but that is a big tbc i do get the feeling that he won't be a center next year if he was to start in the centers i wouldn't be shocked but i also don't think that that's the long-term plan

[01:29:07] we'll talk about some of the fringe guys in a little while and who could possibly play in the centers but we both sort of agree that the experiment is over and that we feel he could be a middle

[01:29:19] because and we'll get to tig shortly but you're not going to drop tig at the moment based on what he's done and you're obviously not going to drop britain so there's no second row of role for

[01:29:32] kona tracy ended up playing 10 games for us and he starred at the end of the year playing fullback it was a long wait for him in between stints i think we were all pretty nervous when we heard

[01:29:45] that he was going to be our fullback and that's based on a few things that's based on his experiences there in the past that's based on his lack of football but it has to be said when

[01:29:55] he played in the centers this year am i correct in saying he was really great right yeah yeah so the opportunities he had were fantastic but they were limited but he was great it was pretty good absolutely

[01:30:09] great the fullback position is slightly more important than the center in the grand scheme of things uh it was a time where we were struggling to sort of stay amongst the top four even the

[01:30:21] top eight we needed to get some wins and he was a large part in that turnaround i would say near faultless at fullback for the majority of those games like okay against the knights they were all

[01:30:34] pretty off the roosters game he was pretty busted based on what kona tracy did this year in the 10 games i have to give him an eight eight to an eight and a half now when i look at my

[01:30:48] best players the sharks kona tracy isn't amongst that but based on the 10 games he's getting points in every game as in like player points he's improved the team he's playing out of his skin we know that

[01:31:02] when kennedy went down tracy knocked on fitz's door and said if you need a fullback on your guy that's pretty cool love that and then he backed it up to the point where i think a lot of people

[01:31:13] was sort of saying don't bring will back well if they're both fit who do you play yeah and there was a debate going around and around and i think ultimately the answer is will but it's not really

[01:31:24] a wrong answer either and that's who kona tracy is he's all heart he's tough as nails there is skill there i don't think he's the most gifted footballer in the world but he makes it work and that's

[01:31:38] something that a lot of guys don't have and there's a lot of talk about will he be at the club in the future there's speculation that he's been told he can look around i can't confirm whether

[01:31:48] that's true or not there are definitely teams who want him i know flano wants him i know the eels want him but i think he's a guy worth sticking around if he's happy to kind of

[01:31:58] be on the fringe now maybe he's not and i you can't fault him for that either yeah i would just hope you wouldn't go to the filthy dragons like sense yeah it does but on his season i

[01:32:09] think the best thing about him going fullback was that we actually adapted our style and we didn't stay okay we're gonna play will kennedy football with kona tracy we said okay kona's not much as

[01:32:21] much of a ballplay is not a slick and i'm sure he knows that as much as anyone so we played a lot more direct than it seemed and it just sort of straightened up our attack and it and it

[01:32:30] sorted out a few issues we're having we're going a little sideways and we went straighter and just a lot more running game and i think it really simplified everything and it kind of got the

[01:32:38] season back on track so i can't i can't fault any of his efforts this year even if he hasn't played the best of times i can never fault that he gives his guts and he gives his heart and his soul

[01:32:49] every time there was times when we were watching him together where we just looked at each other and laughed at the way he was just running back a million miles an hour going this guy is nuts

[01:32:58] yeah but i love that i love that in my players so i can't help but respect that and i hope he stays around because he can just plug so many holes whether that he wants to do that for his career

[01:33:09] i'm sure he doesn't but is he gonna go to the dragons and do the same thing and would you rather go there and do a bench roll where you're gonna fill in gaps or would you rather

[01:33:18] stay at a club where they trust you and they know what you're gonna get i think you might start there you think yeah where would he start possibly fullback i don't know

[01:33:27] look at the bench if he's just starting round one fullback that's a problem though whereas i think if he's a fill in or he's a center but don't forget we're having to debate about whether

[01:33:36] he's gonna be our starting guy in a finals game with but with circumstances surrounding that too if we'll if they're both 100 fit will wins 10 out of 10 times but we'll that's what we think

[01:33:47] and i i think that we're obviously right but but he wasn't far away based on those performances so i know what you're saying yeah but i have to go i hang on a sec because he's actually better

[01:33:59] or he was in those games better than we thought he'd be yes well i think but i think the beauty of doing a play review at this far removed from the season now is that we can think a bit clearer

[01:34:08] sure and at the time i probably got i got wrapped up in kind of tracemania 10 years contracts he's like we was never gonna play again i i'm gonna give him a seven because

[01:34:20] there was a probably one or two games there where he wasn't like at playing center where he was not amazing and there's a few league he tries but for out of the 10 games you probably played eight great

[01:34:31] ones you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna renege on my uh eight and a half and give him an eight okay you coming down with me yeah okay just because i got a bit caught up i gotta give him

[01:34:41] it's a strong eight though not a lot of guys getting eight so i thought he was terrific i'll say this there was a moment in the rooster's game where uh sharks had an opportunity to

[01:34:52] really press the line late in the game and a lot of fault has been put on the number nine i think that a lot of the fault should equally be attributed to the number one who was over

[01:35:07] calling was he i'd never say absolutely oh it's there go back and have a look absolutely over calling the number seven now the nine still has to go one way or the other yes but he went to

[01:35:18] the right and the feeling i'll say amongst certain people in the area and i won't say any more than that is that he shouldn't have been calling the ball right in that moment yes and you know what

[01:35:34] good on him for warning it warning it and having a go but go left and so i think in moments like that your point about him maybe not being the best starting fullback in round one but relatively young

[01:35:50] footballer with a mile to go as far as what he can achieve yeah so there's a bit of room there to grow and i'm sure he'll learn i'll know he'll learn from that anyway bradon trindle played 13 games he started 11 of them and he played pretty pretty pretty good

[01:36:08] he was a large part in turning around the success towards the end of the year he played great at the start of the year there weren't a lot of games where i thought he was

[01:36:20] missing or played below a standard i was really impressed with him i think that the coach yeah i think the coach probably pulled the trigger a bit too late on him coming into back into the team

[01:36:32] that's the coach's call we went with that and i think i know why he did that but i think a bunch of us probably would have gone a bit earlier but trindle i thought was great i love his kicking

[01:36:42] game i love his tenacity his attitude he's real chill but he's tough and competitive i think that he's got a really bright future in the game and i think that whether it's at cronola or somewhere

[01:36:59] else perhaps even overseas i think whatever he does i think he's going to achieve a pretty good career and it's only at the start there is talk about other people pressing him for his position next

[01:37:11] year which may or may not happen i think he starts the season at five eight yep it's his jersey to lose i think him and nico at their best is fantastic but i think that like what we saw in the

[01:37:25] i think the second half of the russes finals game is that he needs to stay involved yes and whether it's whether it's him taking a step back or someone else taking a step forward

[01:37:36] if they take a step forward ie nico then trindle needs to go with him you can't just step back and i thought he was terrific in that first half and the second half just wasn't around the ball

[01:37:48] a whole lot and i thought that was a big difference i keep being somewhat surprised at the level that he plays at when they when they bring him back in i'm like okay i'm not like cheering as soon as i

[01:38:01] said to him go yeah all right trindle's back in when he runs out i'm cheering him and when he plays i'm cheering him and i'm always just you know five percent surprised that the level he

[01:38:11] plays at most weeks so i'm gonna give bread and trindle a strong eight yeah there wasn't a lot he did wrong and and i do think it's his jersey as long as he wants to keep it i think there

[01:38:26] will be times when other guys are sort of pressing him for that but i don't think it'll be round one and i will say this and it's not a knock off his mark or anything the goal kicking thing

[01:38:38] in all seriousness i don't even make a light of it i think there is a minor psychological problem that 100 yeah 100 and i don't want to see it again because he's a great goalkeeper i'm sure

[01:38:50] that's fixable but i need to see i need to hear about evidence of him kicking 45 in a row at training from in front or just near the side and then he can have the job i get the sense he is that

[01:39:02] type of player that would would have been if we were still playing the next day at training he would have been kicking a thousand goals sure because we've seen him at the camera game shank an absolute

[01:39:12] sitter and then nail one over the black dot from the sidelines and yeah so we had the warning yeah but and then again there's like is that a coaching or a or a thing where nico should

[01:39:22] just be kicking from the first because then he took over after that i think you could have i don't think it's a trend or thing put it that way yeah i mean if you could have kicked

[01:39:29] the other two why weren't you just kicking from the start absolutely so i'm not blaming him in that sense but he's still should have kicked it absolutely but i just think that to do that two

[01:39:38] weeks in a row yeah that's a pattern that's not a fluke sure given the responsibility putting the ball between the posts if you're that close and you're at that elite nrl level

[01:39:53] you know one's bad enough but two in a row from the same spot i'm hoping that goal kicking i think you know i think nico is the better kicker so nico should do it yes and understand when nico can't

[01:40:04] trindle the next best option sure and i'm not i don't mean to make a big deal out of this but it's just that's my negative yeah and if i guess if it's a negative on goal kicking that's pretty good

[01:40:15] yes as a player because not everyone's gonna get them all but did you give him a mark i didn't um i pretty much agree with everything you said i mean i have been a pretty staunch trindle fan and

[01:40:27] defender and he's been he's been messed around a little bit probably the last two or three years of his career and he hasn't winned or complained once and when he's gotten five minutes he's come

[01:40:37] on and try to do we've been over this a million times so i won't say it again but when he starts and he plays 80 minutes and he's given you know responsibility in the

[01:40:46] field he plays well i don't there's not many times where he's been a starting half and hasn't played well in first grade for us and out of probably the 50 nrl games he's played maybe half

[01:40:56] of those he started maybe 20 games so he's still so young um and early in his career and i think he's got mountains of talent and levels to go to and um i thought i hope and i

[01:41:11] think he will be the starting six next year yeah and he's got stability like he's on a decent sort of length contract so yeah and fits loves him you can tell he fits a set as much yeah and i'm happy

[01:41:22] to go that way i just think that like in my mind for whatever reason they weren't gonna be the premiership winning combination sure but i'm happy to go with it and happy to say it could be

[01:41:34] at the moment because as individuals they're great players and together they went pretty good and i think a knock has been the fans and other rugby league people have said trindle's not a six well he's playing seven he's the half back when he's on the he's controlling

[01:41:50] everything and that's when we went away from what was working in the roosters game was that he stopped being the seven yeah because heins i know i think as you said trindle should have gone with him

[01:41:59] but we changed everything that was working and heins took over and wasn't playing amazingly well but trindle was was pulling all the strings and then we didn't see him we didn't get any

[01:42:10] ball yeah anyway but yeah trindle was an eight for me as well all right uh jack williams played 24 of the 25 games and they were mostly off the bench and happy to say jack was one of our best forwards

[01:42:27] and very destructive back to his best there's not i don't really have anything negative to say about him at all this year i just thought he was terrific i thought even in games when we

[01:42:36] were sort of gone he just he was one of the few guys really just busting it out you need a guy like jack williams on your team and i think that if he plays that way again next year we're on our way

[01:42:47] and like we need more of that from the guys and hopefully that's an inspiration for them to be like that he's hugely respected around the club i'll give jack a an eight and a half potentially

[01:42:59] a nine i just thought that yeah there was not much that i could personally critique about him now this isn't going to make sense what i'm about to do but i'm giving him a 9.5 even though i don't

[01:43:10] even though i don't think he was in our he was our best player yeah i'm actually giving him the highest rating i am for the year because i thought he was nothing short of incredible

[01:43:19] for this year um for what he's had to come back from with his injuries um coming off the bench when a lot worse players are starting ahead of him uh didn't start a game this year which

[01:43:31] i thought was criminal um started to it all started one started one okay so should have been starting i think by the back end of the year potentially in the front row he could play lock he could play

[01:43:44] front row we saw him play the edge his errors are out of his game his meters his carries his footwork his speed his defense like i can't fault the guy at all this year i thought he was

[01:43:56] near on as perfect as you could get as a as a bench forward and that's why i'm marking him so highly because maybe like mckinnis was a nine and nico and all those guys were higher um better players this

[01:44:08] year i thought for his role you can't you can't do much better so i'm giving him a 9.5 it's pretty pretty good josh i mean i'm not going to disagree with that i gave him a nine and

[01:44:19] i think i gave him a nine yeah i'm just trying to justify why i'm giving him a higher rating but he's not my best player no you don't need to you don't need to at all i think it makes perfect

[01:44:26] sense that i thought his defense was a lot better too in the middle yeah only 33 miss tackles out of 520 yeah and only three is that errors there no no errors is eight but that's out of there's a lot of

[01:44:39] guys a lot of guys with a lot more yeah so he's on the lower end absolutely yeah eight in 25 games and as a guy who runs the ball a lot tired fatigue and you've got hands in the rock all the

[01:44:51] time that's that's great yeah so so a big year from him big year and i think he automatically is in the 17 as well for me yes do you want him to start i just want him on the field longer

[01:45:05] i want him on the field as much like mckinnis i want them on the field together as much as possible and because i think they're such a good right great one two punch in offense and in defense i feel

[01:45:15] so safe with those guys on the field in the middle together because they're so fit as well you never they even though they're probably exhausted they never look tired yeah yeah i wonder i wonder

[01:45:25] what improvement we'd see under him as a start like oh it's a team he's not going to improve much but as and as a team i wonder if it's a better start with him there well should we do a little maybe

[01:45:36] after this little bench of what what we think the bench should be we can try last up we have tiggy wilton his season was uh cut short due to injury he started 17 games and was consistent i thought

[01:45:53] in attack his runs were pretty strong he's a big home brae he's a great specimen he's still growing he's he's he's a rookie in a sense it's probably what second or third year i love the effort i love

[01:46:05] the attitude i think defensively i'll need to see him how it's going to shape in 2024 how we line up on the left before i judge his defense next year this year he was a part of

[01:46:22] the problem i don't know if he was a mass part of the problem or not i think they'll have to take some sort of blame but yeah next year he'll be with i think a different lineup on that left so

[01:46:35] maybe he'll be the best defender in the whole in the whole team i've got no idea i thought his defense on the line occasionally was not great but i would need to watch it back to see when he was at fault

[01:46:47] who was at fault how many times before us was to say oh he was not a good defender because i think he is a good defender but maybe the company he kept wasn't great for him but maybe someone

[01:46:58] turned around and go no no he wasn't good for the company he kept so i think it's just to wait and see but i also think he's growing he's learning and i think there's a really

[01:47:08] bright future fatigue in the sharks he's a great footballer and probably need to see him lift a bit but i don't think that he's not able to and also i don't think that's that much of a big

[01:47:20] ask i'll give tig based on the 17 games he played i'll give him a six and a half but it's like a really strong respectable six and a half yeah look i massive fan of tig i think i think he'll

[01:47:32] play for us for 10 years did take a step back from last year because last year he was genuinely impressive this year is he was still he was good but he's there was a lot more errors this year

[01:47:45] the left edge obviously he's he's a part of it has to take um some blame for and then just with the injury kind of cut him short and just felt like a bit of a it just felt like a bit of

[01:47:54] a downer year fatigue but by no means awful i think he's still good still had his moments um and i think we'll see him bounce back another year another preseason another year older

[01:48:07] might that gets get to fill out that body a bit more um so i'm looking forward to what he'll bring next year but yeah this year i probably can only give him a six they're

[01:48:15] the guys that played in our role as chief for us we did have some fringes hanging around and they may come to more light in the off season and in the 2024 season josh we're talking about

[01:48:29] guys like kale era we're talking about guys like k dykes maybe even a sam stone streets getting mentions around here i am looking forward to the dykes journey he's back to full training

[01:48:42] very shortly i mean they're not back as a squad but he'll be able to take some hits pretty shortly he's he's uh come back from the i think it was the acl has been pretty good successful i think the

[01:48:55] general thought is that he will be either in the fullback or five eighth position and people are sort of leaning their own way which way that's going to go i have a preference for him to

[01:49:07] playing five eighth but i will say this josh i have heard on the streets of chronala that there is a chance he might get some training time in the center position interesting and i went uh well what didn't

[01:49:21] see that coming and then i was like that could definitely work especially for a guy on his comeback trail slightly less work uh he's a skillful strapping young fella and i don't know

[01:49:35] if i've seen him play center in his younger years but i wouldn't put it past him as a natural athletic player and it kind of excites me because we both agree we need to fill in that left

[01:49:51] center position now there's a few different ways you can go with that you could go straight to kale era and i'm not saying that we shouldn't but and he'll be certainly amongst the leaders of being close to getting that position i don't think you can discount connor tracy

[01:50:08] based on his finish to the year in first grade and his experience uh and the effort he put in the games he played at center earlier in the year so i think he's hanging around i am hearing

[01:50:20] that dykes might be an option there and i don't think you can rule out something kooky like a stone street pushing his way in somehow not for round one but somehow into the team whether it's

[01:50:34] wing or center and then maybe a mulitolo moving around now i don't like that idea i want to keep our wingers as is i think if stone street is good enough maybe he can play in the centers

[01:50:47] traditionally a winger but there are options i can see the coach dan ackinson could do that as well i think he's for me he's more of a spine player but yes absolutely he has played there and

[01:50:59] he could do that there is a bit of hope there for that left center position it's up for grabs and it's not necessarily going to be a talakai or an era it could be one of the two for round one

[01:51:08] i'm getting the feeling it won't be talakai but i guess you know the coach probably won't know until you know some workouts and some sessions and some trials to be fair i'm pretty sure he

[01:51:18] hasn't just penciled something no i don't think so so that's exciting it's also kind of risky and experimental and but we need to change dykes also can press for the five eighth position

[01:51:32] he can press for the full back position i think that's less realistic he can be your next man up he can potentially be a bench player he i guess i'm trying to say is going to be amongst the

[01:51:42] top 18 once he's fully ready to go yeah and that should be in theory by round one now i'm not saying in round one he'll be in the top 18 but he's going to be hanging around that position the coach

[01:51:55] is going to be like can we slot him in somewhere and maybe it'll take six weeks 10 weeks i don't know but he's resigned for a longer deal than uh who was at beryl and harrotti yeah they've locked

[01:52:08] k down for a while now so they believe in him so it's exciting because he's a really exciting player we've seen that in a couple of games he's already played he's versatile which is good yeah i'm still

[01:52:21] i'm still not there with kade i know i'm fairly behind on maybe the club and there hasn't been a lot to see yeah i'm just a lot of people and i'm not this is not a go at your anything but

[01:52:31] a lot of people are getting their hopes up really big on kade that he's going to be the superstar and i hope he is i'm just i'm just not there yet and i've got trindle penciled in for

[01:52:43] a long time before that even becomes an option okay so i'm willing to i think kade still needs to get back fit get some games under his belt and play play a lot of the season for new town

[01:52:55] and then we'll see are that obviously with injuries and form and how he's going and i'm sure the club is hoping that he won't have to play five eighth yeah they want trindle to succeed

[01:53:05] sure there's no reason to say he won't but i think the vibe on dykes is that they're pretty hot for him aren't they yeah long term yeah so it's not going to be an immediate rush i know i'm talking

[01:53:17] about there's a rush i'm saying like if he's ready to go in round one he may not be in you starting side at all but the thought will be if needed where can we slot him in yeah

[01:53:29] like he's not going to be far from their thoughts keep in mind he's already played a couple of narrow games yeah and i think that there is that hope that that he can be something yeah and i mean

[01:53:40] we haven't bought anyone for next year so it's the same team can this young guy come in and improve that now year after there should be some money around and the definitely guys coming off

[01:53:51] contract elsewhere who you might want to have a look at in similar positions and so maybe by then you'll know yeah maybe you won't but maybe you'll know you'll be like no no kates our guy

[01:54:02] or trindle's our guy or maybe be like uh we need to look elsewhere yeah we got the money that that guy's there let's get him so it's kind of good timing and the way that the sharks handle the

[01:54:13] contract stuff's really good like i don't think it's crazy crazy money for him it's more just a show of respect you know you you're injured but we want to keep you around signed for another

[01:54:24] year and i think that loyalty obviously is loyal to the club goes along with the whole thing yeah i think it's just that's the storyline it's like we want you to be a shark we know you banged up for

[01:54:33] the whole year but and that contract would have been coming for a while oh yeah they would have they don't just pluck these things out in a couple of weeks yeah so uh so that's all positive stuff

[01:54:43] you know and whether he's the guy or not the guy he's going to be handy at the worst i would have thought sure maybe he becomes a utility maybe tracy goes somewhere and he becomes that

[01:54:52] he's got the body shape to kind of feel anywhere yeah one three six seven at a pinch he's a big boy yeah the injuries they worry me a little bit but not enough at the moment to

[01:55:05] not offer him another deal and that kind of if he's if he's rehabbed right we've seen it how many guys come back from yeah no i just mean i think i think he's had a few i may i may be

[01:55:15] talking out of my body but i think he's had a few a few kind of significant injuries young age but we've seen a lot of people in sport come back from that so that's i'm not

[01:55:25] saying that's anything i'm just saying it's a yeah it's there it's there yeah so uh yeah that's where i at josh that's where we're at what do you think quickly if you were to

[01:55:37] if you were to name your round one bench oh man the next year well that means i'm gonna have my starting props and forwards well we know we know teagan rip will be our starting

[01:55:49] second row so cams our lock braily's our hooker so props so i'm gonna have you welly hamlin you welly and i don't even know why don't we just muck around and say hazelton will start right

[01:56:03] okay so that leaves colhoun finoucan hunt kufusi rudolf talakai and williams so this is gonna be some reggie's in here well i think that kufusi may be basing it on my own thing i think that it's

[01:56:23] your team if it's my team he might have something to prove okay although he did finish the year with a couple of games so he's back in the thoughts of the nr all guys of the coach the talakai

[01:56:34] i don't think he'll leave talakai out of the 17 so then it's like well is roissy fit to go is rudolf's foot okay if they're all fit it's a tough one yeah you haven't even mentioned finoucan

[01:56:47] yeah he's gonna he'll be there whether we want him to that that might be where the coach kind of goes uh let's put talakai on the center see you know what maybe that's maybe that's part of it it's really

[01:56:58] tricky this year or next year it's going to be very interesting how he fits everyone in because we were there's someone always kind of injured yeah so he never really had to make it

[01:57:08] too hard of a call so in the past i would have said it's my interpretation only it's only my thoughts oh maybe the coach isn't sold on roissy so maybe he'll miss out but then he signed it for two more

[01:57:19] years yeah so there's no issue there not that i was just there is issue there's no issue there so it's hard from if i'm looking at it from the coach's point of view and hopefully we'll talk to

[01:57:29] him and he won't even give us an idea on that but it's hard to think about it from his point of view and go well who's gonna miss out i mean maybe jesse needs to prove himself more at all well

[01:57:40] he doesn't need to prove himself at a lower level but i think he misses out which is hard because he at his best he's a good good you'll be a good player and a good bench player for sure i think

[01:57:50] he's gonna go and we'll just say interchange like for finoucan and cam because one of them will start and obviously one of them will be the bench so there's one spot gone williams is definitely

[01:58:00] gonna be there does cam have to come off no but he will but he shouldn't but he he'll bench he'll rotate him so it'd be finoucan williams will definitely have spots then it's brood off

[01:58:14] or hazelton well we've got hasn't started so brood off's there yeah and then it's got it there's talakai so no kufusi no kufusi who else we missing is that it oh no colhoun no hunt

[01:58:28] no hunt so three good players and are not going to be playing and it'll be four if he goes with the utility yes he has done i guess though you you get that utility out with talakai being there

[01:58:42] you kind of cover one to 13 realistically besides the halves and hooker yeah talakai covers you yeah sure sure not fall back obviously as well but sure but then yeah you can tinker with

[01:58:54] you guys yeah yeah maybe that's the way to go because then you then fits gets his utility but then if we don't need one he's got his he's got his middle so do you still give talakai big minutes

[01:59:06] but then like when he comes off and then someone does something and they have to go off you just pull him back on pulling back on please use the playing for 80 minutes yeah exactly obviously not

[01:59:15] the middle but he's playing he's played 80 minutes for three years now he'd be less gassed because he's playing less yeah like just because in the middle we more effective he still does those

[01:59:23] hit ups them like he still doesn't shy away from that stuff so that's not going to affect him and it might help his defense not having to think as much and he's oh yeah he's got good guys on

[01:59:31] the other side of him absolutely i think that's the bench for me starting and so we're pretending that hails will turn and root and i don't think he has them he won't but you you can

[01:59:43] interchange those guys one of them will start and one of them will bench yeah so i think that's where it'll land because you can't drop williams you can't drop hazelton you can't drop talakai

[01:59:56] but then hunt is missing who've had a pretty decent year but then then he dropped it you're not dropping toby so it's like yeah so it's very tricky it is tricky maybe we should go

[02:00:07] easier on the coach maybe we go pretty easy on him josh has been fun man how many windows you got up on your computer yeah too many it's like 25 and i'm not even that bad compared to some other

[02:00:20] staff members i've got two lucky so thanks for your time josh appreciate you and we'll be back with more episodes over spring and summer do not fear we will not go anywhere we would love

[02:00:36] to hear your thoughts on your player rankings if you want to send in not necessarily your player rankings for every player but if you have a discrepancy with someone that we may have overlooked

[02:00:46] as far as how they went we'd love to hear from you so give us a shout out about that yeah we'll be speaking to you before you know it so i hope you're all taking care and sorry about the

[02:00:57] lucianess of this episode but sometimes that's just how it is right it's off season we're not thinking straight we're not thinking straight there's no off season to be fair you think

[02:01:07] there's no off season i have switched off yeah that's all i work that i can i can tell by the two hours of you talking about the sharks we'll be back real soon take care i've said that 48 times

[02:01:18] but i mean it 48 times and we'll talk to you shortly this is sharkas pod over and out sharkas in the shower tell you what slides off because we're covering over the trophy