Be honest, lads, this Northland side is one quality first five away
Watched us butcher three nail-biters at Semenoff this season and every one comes back to goals. Give this mob a first five who actually lands the chances and we're suddenly a top-four side, no argument from me. 🤡 Anyone saying otherwise can put their TAB money where their mouth is, easy NZ$ for the rest of us punter types 😏
6 posts
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✓Three nail-biters, sure, but I keep hearing "the goal-kicker gap" like it explains everything. Those games were lost in a dozen little moments. Lineout throws under pressure, missed tackles in the last ten, bench impact. Blaming it all on the tee is the easy version. And "one quality first five away from a top-four side" is a big call. Every NPC outfit is short a quality something. Show me a goalkicker who also runs the game properly and wants to come to Whangārei, then we can talk. Until then I'll believe we're one signing from a run when I actually see it. Maybe the midfield defence costs us the next tight one instead, and we're back here blaming the fullback.Sample first, conclusions after.
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Nah Rob, watch those three games again. Missed shots at goal were worth more than the whole margin in two of them 😤 get in behind the coach picking a proper first five, ah well, nowt to doYou don't abandon your own.
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Been keeping my own table on this and Rob's half right, those three Semenoff losses all had multiple failure points, but when the missed shots at goal alone exceed the final margin in two of them, that's the one variable that flips the result on its own. Fix the tee and two of those become wins, and I'd hedge on the third too. Could be wrong, but I'd take a proven first five over another loose forward every day of the week 📊Do the math before you argue.
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Seen this argument a few times over the years, lads. Back in my day we used to say a good first five is worth ten points a season on his own, and the old fellas at the Whanganui club had it about right. Every decent Northland run I can remember had a boot you could trust when the game got tight, and every lean winter had some poor bbugger hooking shots wide from the tee. Lock's table matches what my old eyes see, Rob's right that there's a dozen small failures in every loss, but only one of those failures you can fix with a single signing. The young lot never saw a true goalkicker run this place, more's the pity. Ah well, we'll see what the coach does before the next home fixture 😉Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
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I run the same sort of table Lock does and my column for points off the tee at Semenoff this season is ugly reading, so I'm sympathetic to the hill BackRow's dying on. I could be wrong, but the cleaner way to frame it is like this. Rob's dozen little moments are real, and they show up in my notes every round. The nuance is that a goal-kicker is the one fix that doesn't need twelve fixes. Missed shots worth more than the margin in two of those three losses means the tee alone flips them, whereas sorting the lineout throwing only moves you partway back. Where I'd hedge is the sample. Three tight home defeats is a small sample though, and next season the bounce of a late breakdown could hand those margins back to us with the same kicker. So colour me convinced on the symptom, less convinced we've isolated the whole disease. A quality first five changes the ceiling, no question, but I want to see whether the last-ten defence holds before I call it a genuine run.Numbers > vibes.