yeah, your last paragraph says it all really
NRL NRL 2026 General Recruitment Thread
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Melbourne doesn’t really have the cattle at the moment tbh.
My son who’s only 10 but pretty onto it with his footy was telling me all week we would beat them easily- we actually sat down and done the old compared the team lists player for player and both had us on top- the only one we disagreed on was him rating Boyd above Hughes (which surprised me because he rates metcalf over Boyd) but his rationale was that Hughes is looking old and has lost his confidence without katoa besides him- pointing out the way Penrith targeted him on defence the week before.
Anyway I digress… it’s the first time I can ever remember looking at our lineups side by side and thinking we had the better roster.
They lost some blardy good players in katoa, nas and papi and I think they thought they could just bring in some journeymen to replace them- Bellamy could click his fingers and they’d become elite- but they’re not surrounded by the same calibre of players they have had in the past- their forwards stocks in particular.
My son who’s only 10 but pretty onto it with his footy was telling me all week we would beat them easily- we actually sat down and done the old compared the team lists player for player and both had us on top- the only one we disagreed on was him rating Boyd above Hughes (which surprised me because he rates metcalf over Boyd) but his rationale was that Hughes is looking old and has lost his confidence without katoa besides him- pointing out the way Penrith targeted him on defence the week before.
Anyway I digress… it’s the first time I can ever remember looking at our lineups side by side and thinking we had the better roster.
They lost some blardy good players in katoa, nas and papi and I think they thought they could just bring in some journeymen to replace them- Bellamy could click his fingers and they’d become elite- but they’re not surrounded by the same calibre of players they have had in the past- their forwards stocks in particular.
Jaffa J
📈
I don’t think Hughes has been right since we messed his shoulder up last year
Noitall
👤
I’m not sure I consider NAS in the same level of loss as the likes of Katoa, Blore or Papenhuyzen. Even Grant Anderson held that centre role and Meaney isn’t a strong centre. Definitely they miss the impact NAS brought from the bench when it all went to plan, but that became few and far between and they became reluctant to use him
CWC
🔍
My 10 year old daughter just said boring and walked away
Yeah, he's pretty poor as the last line of defence, but players like Walsh, Drinkwater, Faalogo, Kini and Iongi are the new generation and its probably fair to day that defence is not their strongest attribute.
Looking at Taine, he has phenomenal defence at the back, and imo this year has helped save about 4 tries that I think few other full backs would. I think hes probably the gold standard.
But even he fails compared to Drinky..
Drinkwater has 3 tries, 7 try assists, 3 line breaks, 10 line break assists, and 1 try save.
TT has no tries, 2 try assists, 1 line breaker, 1 line break assist and 5 try saves...
Drinkwater is also a solid in game kicker too.
Evil_Mush
🛡️
Are you my son?
CWC
🔍
Your son reading the game better than half of us on here.
I thought you were Frank's half brother?
He's my brother from a different Fuhrer. Love ya, Frank!
Don’t we all
Fair enough but do u think we would’ve bashed them around in the second half the way we did if nas was out there?
he still brought an intimidation factor none of their forwards could match (or ours tbh).
Just to expand on the yarn… we were actually watching it on my phone at the temple in uluwatu and a monkey tried to grab it so I had to put it away and watch the second half when we got back to the villa- that was just before halftime so we were both sweating on the result- It was definitely worth the wait and I hold no ill feelings towards said monkey.
