Round 18: Newcastle Knights vs Parramatta Eels

Friday the 13th, what could possibly go wrong haha

 

Better yet - what could possibly go right?

 

Ironically that was my 666th post

 

Said at the start of the year if Denniss is anywhere near first grade then you will be struggling again. By god is he awful. Surely Brown can’t pick and stick with him?

Eels are there for the taking with or without Ponga though. Score early against them and they will pull up stumps for the night.

Watson for first try in the first 10 minutes.

 

Denniss has been pretty solid outside of Saturday. He did looked out of depth though. Him out and Ross in is a no brainer for the Parra game.

 

mozza this is COREY Denniss you are talking about?

He has been hopeless in defence for three years.

 

Yeah this week was shocking aside from that his been reasonable, surprised at everyones lynching after one shocker.

 

He hasn't been reasonable at all in defence!
He gets dragged out of position far too much, especially when on the short side at the play the ball!
I can think of at least 4 tries which were scored down his side due to him following the ball from outside in at the ruck!
Blake Ferguson scored two beauties which eventually cost us the Roosters game!
Rushing across works well when the dummy half actually passes the ball that way, but Denniss goes way too early and every team is on to it!
One on one he goes alright most times, but positionally he is poor!

 

Watch it LongProng!

You will be called a lyncher also agreeing with me!~

 

He has had one decent game... the win against parra, after that he has been well behind ross.

Not 1st grade standard at all...

 

You really have to understand the game to see how out of his depth he is at times!
He is still young though, I give him some hope of developing into a solid first grader, Ross is currently the better option.

 

Not really. Other than last weekend he’s been on par defensively with anyone else whose played left centre for us this year.

 

Brown correctly points out that the poor defence on our edges comes from our middle players not sliding and his response to the problems the left side was having was to move Stone to the right and Barnett to the left.
In at least one of the tries scored against us Denniss was defending about 15 metres of the line by himself and tried to rush up to take the guy with the ball - which was about all he could have done.
The only time in the last 2 years our defence has looked good was when Ross was playing fullback and spent all game shouting at guys to slide in defence.

 

https://www.newcastleknights.com.au/news/2018/07/03/browns-options-replacing-griffin-and-ponga/

Brown talking about options.

Fullback options - Watson, Meaney, Ross
5/8 - doesn't say
Half - Pearce
Hooker - Levi, Buhrer, Watson, Starling

 

Have you seen Ross this year? I'd say that's debatable, and that's not praising Dennis!

 

And Ross Dawg has proved he has no idea of defensive reads or positioning at fullback.

 

And miles better than the right centre.

 

As I said it is not so much his defence in general play that is a problem, at least no worse than anyone else we've had there!
It is when he is defending the short side when the opposition has a play the ball, he shoots infield too early leaving too much distance between him and the sideline!
Opposition sides are now running short side plays at him with great success and he still hasn't worked it out!

 

Fair. Our right centre is a year older with 70 more first grade games and still makes the same defensive error consistently.

Maybe we should move Dennis one in and have Cogger defend at centre.