Sharks vs Bulldogs - Trial 2, 2024 Review and Player Retention With Kieran Fraser

[00:00:00] Choches! Choches!

[00:00:02] Goodness! Goodness!

[00:00:08] The Fina drives the crack, he's way over me, guys!

[00:00:12] The Fina drop the ball over the line!

[00:00:14] And to all you people back in the Shire,

[00:00:17] tell you what slights off, come was a very physical affair and that worried me throughout the whole game. What did you make of what we just saw just to begin with? The first half, I think it was something like 82% completion rates. The second half was something like, I think I saw 56 our defense look you know amazing which it wasn't. It was just very solid. Give me some positives. What positives have you got out of this match? I think to your point right the first half the dogs and any minute second half but the first half especially the dogs came out breathing fire like that first

[00:04:22] sort of 20 minutes was just the Bulldogs being of trouble. And then we would just go back into kind of playing trial football, get ourselves in a little bit of trouble, defend out of it, weather the storm. So it was a little bit weird, even at the, I think the last 10, 15 minutes, I think the dogs had majority of their starters on probably to the last 10, 15 minutes.

[00:04:25] Even in that period, like read mining but I really was in yeah I mean we'll go through the players in a little bit but I thought that once the sort of initial changes came on they looked a little bit better even though I had no problem with the guys starting

[00:05:43] it just as it as a unit they weren to sort of try and do everything which doesn't really suit his game. I thought Atkinson didn't have the he was going to play. So I think that kind of made it a bit clunky. There was a few clunky passes, a couple of things in defense and just didn't kind of flow, but maybe that's teams really went for it I'll give him that both teams. I Guess I just I guess I just worry about some of those Simple dummy half passes from McInnis where I know that he can do

[00:09:41] 98 out of a hundred of them to the chest, but we just saw two that didn't but I mean

[00:09:46] Why is the guy playing 70 minutes in preseason? That's my big question in a trial, I think you need that voice. And last week, Cam only played limited minutes. I think he probably paid about 12 minutes because he had that knock and all type of stuff. So maybe they were like, let's get some time into his legs. But I also think they probably looked at it as a chance for us. Okay, Blake's gone down. Like, let's just see Cam, like, let's get you used to playing nine again

[00:11:01] in case in round two or three something happens to Blake. Like, the natural progression is that Cam Really? The Eero stuff really impressed me because he had a few chances where he could have passed the ball or dived on a loose ball close to a sideline, but he showed real control and compared that to last week where everyone was expecting him to kind of go out went down to 12 when the core went off, he actually made a try-saving tackle in the front line and then jumped back and saved some stuff at the back too. So I thought he had a great return. Again, he was late by injuries too. So yeah, I thought he was super physical. Let's talk about that for a second.

[00:13:40] We were down to 12 men, Britt and Nikhira saved a try but then held on to the Feller in classic

[00:13:45] fashion, 10 in the beginning tough carries back from him. I thought he was fine, didn't set the wall on fire, probably just another one to get under his belt. Yeah, and I was pretty worried when he had that ankle injury early because I was thinking, uh oh, here we go.

[00:15:00] But he came out the second half and he actually looked a little bit freer after a little bit

[00:15:03] of a rest.

[00:15:04] So yeah, he didn't, I think he played like been Preston. Aside from that, I don't remember too many highlights from him, but seemed to play some big minutes. I think the position's his, round one. Did you see anything in Sifu tonight? Just again, super physical. That was the one thing I noticed with Sifu, was everything that he did, every carry that he did was physical and someone seemed to have felt the impact and the same with his defence.

[00:16:24] He was really giving it to be honest with you. So I'll die on that island and I think our wingers are fantastic but yeah, just don't draw attention to stuff when you're going to be a little bit cheeky. We spoke about Trindall a little bit. He kicked really well when he had good ball reception from dummy half.

[00:17:42] He kicked over 400 metres.

[00:17:44] I think one might have technically been a 40's like that Samson story. I mean, I'm not a religious person, but I remember that from school, but you know, he's got the long hair now and he's, he just seems angrier and he's more aggressive. And I don't know if that's also something that I think we might touch on a little bit later, but there's so much competition for our middle spots, not only this year, but for next year. I think he's realized that, you know, if he wants to stick around and obviously he does,

[00:19:05] you know, he's got to step up and he's trying everything and there's offloads close to the

[00:19:08] line of proving pretty good. Royce has been on that kind of trajectory of real improvement the last kind of 18 months or so. He's morphing into a different player. And I think the more competition, the better he goes. And if you look at this year, he might be this third or fourth prop in the rotation. Last year he was hard to be the number one prop.

[00:20:21] And then you look at next year when he's still on contract,

[00:20:23] there's a chance that he might not even make the 17.

[00:20:26] So he's going super hard I think the improvements been there probably since, I don't know, the second half of last year. There was like a moment where the switch kind of flicked, I think. And he went from a guy that was kind of in and out of the team to the guy that we needed to be our number one prop or number two prop underrate Britain Nico to be honest. So I was on a long drive out to Cornell. Anyone who lives at Cornell, I'm so sorry that you did so far away from everything. But just lost Gary Dover as a listener.

[00:24:01] ran for 80 meters.

[00:24:04] Uh, I thought that he had a presence out there. It wasn't remarkable tonight, but he every now and then tonight he reminded

[00:24:08] me of how much I like him and, and we'll talk about the forward situation shortly.

[00:24:13] But he he's in the hunt for the 17 at least at the very least.

[00:24:19] Yeah.

[00:24:19] And I think we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but we have six

[00:24:22] players from our NRL squad off contract.

[00:24:25] Um, because of the great work the club has done of keeping players.

[00:25:23] He could be very explosive off the bench. So, I mean, you have heard stories about his preseason, how hard he's gone, and I've heard

[00:25:29] stories as well from different people about the effort that he's put in this preseason.

[00:25:33] If you read online too, there's people talking about it as well.

[00:25:37] There was one stage we had him in the front row.

[00:25:42] We also had a Hazleton in the front last year and Knights fans were quite upset about it. So yeah, I was super stoked about him. The other guy we haven't talked about was, was Teague Wilton. He caused two errors in play the balls in the first half. And I thought he really kind of threw himself in the action this week after a little bit of a quiet game last week. What'd you think about Teague? Yeah, physically was there. I think we need him to be strong to be, to be as good as we

[00:28:23] can this year. Like he's out, he's one of us center? But it seems like now there's kind of a direction there and it kind of looked like they were comfortable because Siffa was building people. Ronnie was building people. Teague was being super physical. So again, I think this gives us something to build from. Again, it's early days and it's a trial. The one trial came down there, but they were down a man. So it's like, I'm not going to

[00:29:40] hang out the trial.

[00:29:41] Yeah. And Teague got caught in the middle because he was at Dummy, he was at Marker

[00:29:44] and Trindle was out there by himself. So it's like, sometimes they're really good. Sometimes they're not very good, but I just want to see them do more.

[00:31:02] And Dyches is a great example.

[00:31:03] And it's a bad example as well because he's coming off an ACL.

[00:31:06] But what's he done? 26 when he's off contract with the Sharks. Cause he's like 22, 23 now. So we will get the full snapshot of where we think he's going to be. And if you actually look at when he comes off contract at the same time as someone like Will Kennedy, Will Kennedy is going to be 29 when Will Kennedy comes off contract. So you're going to know which way you want to go.

[00:32:22] And you might say, you know, we want to go signing. And that is super interesting because we have the juggernaut that is for Newell Blake coming our way next year.

[00:33:42] And there's all these different theories, like people were saying,

[00:33:45] well, have to lose Hamlet in the ET stand and disabled fans. He'll go not something we've had as a fan base because,

[00:36:22] Sharks fans, we're used to rotating players every two, three years.

[00:36:24] This is what Pennrith have done.

[00:36:25] Pennrith have built a squad and Pennrith are, let that go either. I mean, a lot of these guys have played together since the 20s. So you look at like a guy like Braden Trindle. He's been at a club since what, I think 2018, 2019, Nikora, same sort of story, right? These guys have all grown up together. Like Trindle and Kennedy have played together for years and then you add in a guy like Nico and that's kind of the secret sauce I think that you see.

[00:37:41] And if you actually go back and watch some they're six years younger or whatever, they're going to get their shot, but it's just going to take a while. Yeah. I, I look at the roster management and I think I looked at this and I think I saw

[00:39:01] stone street and Dykes will be, it'd be like 24, 25 or so when they come off

[00:39:06] contract in 2026.

[00:39:08] Yeah.

[00:39:09] Yeah.

[00:40:04] But the Cowboys, they're looking like they're going to go better, even though they've had a bad year last year, because of all the young guys they've got coming through.

[00:40:08] So the player market's crazy, Sam.

[00:40:10] Talk about it a lot, you and I.

[00:40:11] I know we could tell, for example, it's a great, great play to pick out because when

[00:40:16] he's 29, we're probably going to say, we could say a number of things, but you think it'd

[00:40:21] be time for Superleek or something.

[00:40:24] Maybe he'll go to another NRL club with a pat in the back and a bottle of champagne the right way to do business, he would be obviously putting pressure on the club to go out and try and do those things. But the one thing the Roosters do really well is the guys to build the Roosters normally have long careers at the Roosters, Orbison's and Daniel Tupo's and all that type of stuff. Right? Daniel Tupo is probably like the Cattawa example, right? Daniel Tupo is I think like 32 now.

[00:41:40] I think he's been on like one or two year contracts the last couple of years.

[00:41:43] Great play.

[00:41:44] There's even talk, yeah, there's talk that doco happen or something because man, they've really, like the Fanuah Blake thing was huge. And I know people are a little bit mixed on Hamill Newelly as far as like, is he worth whatever he's going to get? And he's injured a lot

[00:43:00] and that kind of stuff. But I mean, on his day, he's our best prop currently. Why would

[00:43:05] you let him go? have a strike center, they need to upgrade that. They've gone and got the best 18-year-old in the country that they feel and they swapped a 28-year-old for him. So even these contracts that these guys have got, if we saw it with Lockie Miller where they traded for Bradbury, the Sharks are open to doing business if they can see a youngster that they can kind of upgrade it. So you start seeing

[00:44:21] that moneyable strategy. I'm impressed by it. It's got a story and he wants to finish that story to do what his dad didn't do. I saw that BHU wrote something on his Instagram the stories, this is not the end of my story and I replied on all the podcast saying finish your story and I knew he'd know what I meant because he's a

[00:45:43] big fan of the squared circle which is in Perth currently. Tomorrow night and do this we just thought we'd hit record this time to do so and we hope you have enjoyed what you've heard get in touch with us as always actually before we go Kieran before I run our power we did have some correspondence let's hit that Daniel has written to us and Daniel says well he says happy new year it's too late to say that Daniel so I'm not going to accept that he said sharks first dogs

[00:47:02] trial wasn't the game a lot of then the first back off the New South Wales Cup team is probably going to be Herrotti just based on my Sharks fandom. I just think that he's the guy that they kind of fall back on like it or not. So I don't see any bolters. Again, you look at that team and for round one, I don't know if Dell or BHU will be fit,

[00:48:24] but there's probably two other guys that are probably going to come back in the mix.

[00:48:27] But other than that, it's he's going to be fine. Yeah, he's the up. He actually looked pretty good. I think Alex is just sort of pointing out those glaring errors and that gets us all a bit worried, which I had me worried for a little bit till you talked me around a little bit. But thanks for being in touch Alex.

[00:49:40] Everyone else can be in touch, although I did just get a bit of a text here.

[00:49:45] What have we got happening here?

[00:49:47] What's happening?