General Warriors Harold Matthews 2025
- Thread starter mt.wellington
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A lot of Aussie clubs are after Mikaele. Ioka can play anywhere — he’s skilled and a freakish talent.
Young Hansen is a very skilled, tough little bugger who could make an excellent 13 if he continues to develop.
As for Bishop and Lemana, the sky’s the limit if they stay humble and work their asses off.
Smart ass Souths fullback passes to touch judge and that’s all she wrote. Congrats to TJ and the boys
Thanks for the updates.
Reading the updates from you guys, it sounds like Ronan Byford is a good prospect too?
I think Neal will probably go back to school try to a win a third national high school competition with St Thomas. Next year will be a challenge to play 3 grades of footy in a year will probably be the making of him. It will be interesting to see what they do with Lemana & Ratcliffe next year. Lemana did play centre last year in the HM. Or they could play Ratcliffe in JF next year at fullback so Lemana can play full back in SG Ball. Eventually though they are going to have to make a decision between the 2.
Nailed it.
I hope TJ gets the SG ball team next year, that would be good progression for him.
Hopefully they just fly him around with the Flegg team this year. Give him 20-30min off the bench each week. Would be far more beneficial than playing school footy.
Lemana vs Ratcliffe will be interesting one next year in SG ball. I think Lemana is the superior talent. But Ratcliffe is less versatile and can't see him playing anywhere other than fullback.
Lemana reminds me of Motu Pasikala. Eerily similar in build, height & playing style. Speaking of Pasikala, What has happened to this kid? Haven't seen him in any wahs teams ?
The talent pool in this year's SG Ball side might not have been what you expected - and everyone is entitled to their opinion - but to say they "suck" or "write them off" is pretty rough for a bunch of (ultimately) kids plying their trade in rugby league...
The success of a football club isn't defined solely by the 17 blokes playing first grade in any given week, its the whole club and the pathways within it - as evidenced by Penrith's run (as well as, to some extent, our more recent success). We're going to need players in our NSW Cup side, we're going to need Flegg players and we need strong local footy teams/comps to boost the quality of our player pool. Will all of our 2025 SG Ball side play NRL - probably not, but realistically only a small handful of most SG Ball sides will. There is talent within that squad (including outside of those kids you mentioned) - one less than ideal season results-wise shouldn't define any football player, and I'm sure they'll all learn from a pretty challenging year in terms of results. For example, Maui has a lot of attributes that suggest he could be at the club for a long time - does he have the skill/x-factor to play NRL, perhaps or perhaps not, but he looks to be be a great clubman who could (at least) be the mainstay of our Cup side for years to come having already played a number of Flegg games while still eligible for SG Ball (13 in 2024, one fewer than Filipo).
Our pathways teams are on the right track in what are tough competitions - the two Harold Matts teams have exceeded all expectations (and will hopefully go back-to-back on Saturday), and the SG Ball and Jersey Flegg sides will continue to improve as the players/coaches/club learn what it takes to match it with pathways teams from Aussie clubs. As our pathways teams continue develop, our Cup side will only get stronger and this will no doubt see more homegrown talent flow into the first grade side (as well as, unfortunately, more Warriors juniors popping up at other clubs).
On the coaching point - the SG Ball coach is a Kiwi (all three of our main pathways sides have Kiwi head coaches). The results won't have been what he wanted, but result aren't the sole focus of pathways coaches, they're there to develop players. SG Ball is a tough competition and I don't think we can judge a pathways coach based on a handful of games (even fewer than a club footy season!). I don't know your coaching CV/resume, so can't really comment on it, but I think I'll put my trust in Cappy on this one given he's responsible for pathways - including coaching - at the club. If you think you could have done a better job, then perhaps you should have thrown your hat in the ring...
One thing I think we can agree on though is that we'll expect the SG Ball side to be better in 2026 as a result of this year's campaign and the talent + development of the Harold Matts squads over the past two years.
(To pull it right back on topic) Best of luck to the Harold Matts side on Saturday - hopefully they can do it again!!
Okay to start I never said any player "sucked"
I'm gonna have to disagree on your assessment on Maui. I don't mean that disrespectfully, I just don't see anything from him that suggests he will be NRL player. It's not quite that easy to just become a clubman and mainstay in a NSW cup side as a half. There's usually four top 30 halves, which means two will be starting in NSW cup when fully healthy (i.e. TMM and Boyd) plus there will be younger halves the club will want to give opportunities to in cup, i.e. Cleary, T Hansen, Thompson, Tusa Soagia etc etc. His best bet after Flegg is probably aligning himself with a QLD cup side that has no NRL contracted halves then maybe catching the eye of an NRL team in his mid twenties
The point of a NSW cup side is to have guys who are NRL contracted or being developed as future NRL players. Even fringe NRL contract guys like MGT, he was an absolute stud in SG ball. The only other guys that fit that bill are Doyle and Going.
It's okay to say that this group of U19 players wasn't very good or below expectations or that you don't think there's any future NRL players (again I'm not including last years Harold Matts in this statement)
I'm not sure where the controversy in that lies. They are kids, but they're not exempt from criticism. I'm sure we will all forget about this pretty quickly anyway.
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Sorry if that was implied - that was not my intent and I know you didn't say that. My comment was in response to both the poster of the message you responded to having said the team sucked and you referring to writing players off.
Not suggesting you can't critique players / teams or comment as to whether you think there are any future NRL players in a particular team - it was more the way you (and the previous poster) did so. At the end of the day, the players in our pathways teams are still kids and no kid (or their dreams) should be just "written off" - we don't know their situation, their development/pathway or if players or their families could be reading this messages, so I think we ought to be respectful with our opinions. That's my view - it might not be shared by everyone (and that's fine) but I felt it appropriate to voice that.
Agree that a big reason for Reserve Grade is to feed First Grade, but not all players in the Reserve Grade squad will play NRL (plus injuries, suspensions, etc.) - so Reserve Grade squads need those other guys who are more than capable at that level too. You might not agree with me on Maui and I definitely take your point that clubman role being tough as a half, but he could quite easily be the next Ben Farr / Kalani Going - he has the attributes of a guy you want in your 17 (work ethic, talk, hearty, can ball-play as a half, etc.) so they might be able to mould him into a utility or small 13. Or, they might not and he could take another path. My reference to Maui was more to point to a guy who doesn't have the same plaudits as some other players coming through the ranks who would, if he doesn't make it to the NRL, be awesome to have in some other role in the club. My comments were more that we shouldn't expect every Harold Matts and SG Ball player will play NRL - as that just won't happen (unless NRL sides completely turn over every 2 years!) - but those players will play other roles in our pathways, whether at the club or otherwise.
Anyhow, onwards and upwards to Saturday - big game for the Harold Matts team, would be great for the players, TJ, the club and our pathways if they can bring home the trophy again.
How good was Bishops first run…
My god of all days, Bar TV have to reboot their system… FFS
We’re back…
Knights no.6 strolls through some poor defence, hasn’t been a great start from the boys
Try Knights really soft right up the middle unfortunately. 6-0
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