Be honest, Tahs fam: this squad is one season away from being
One season from great, yeah nah, I've heard that tune before about this mob 😂 Every year someone swears the young No.9 is the second coming, then a derby at Allianz goes sideways and suddenly everyone's calling for the experienced head like it was obvious all along. The halves debate is the whole season in a nutshell: pick the kid and you're building for 2026, pick the old head and you're one dodgy referee call from the same rebuild chatter. So which is it, fam, are we actually good or just hopeful? Asking for a punter mate of mine who's already put money on the Tahs making the top four and is getting nervous 😏
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✓Gary, that argument works against you. Every year the same mob write off the young No.9 before he's had a proper run of starts, then judge him off fifteen minutes of a scrappy derby. Give the kid a full season of first-choice minutes and then we'll have an actual sample to argue over, until then it's just vibes, which I don't rate as evidence.Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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GloryDays is spot on imo 🔥 give the kid a proper run of starts before judging him off one scrappy derby. Back him through thick and thin, ah well, nowt to do 💪You don't abandon your own.
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I keep a table on this every round, and the sample size point is the one that actually holds up: judging the young No.9 off one scrappy derby at Allianz is terrible methodology, because derby noise, referee calls, crowd, adrenaline. Swamps any signal about a halfback. Give him a proper run of starts, say six to eight, and then the numbers mean something. I could be wrong, but Gary's cynicism is the exact reason this club keeps recycling the same debate every season. 📊Do the math before you argue.
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Funny thing is, I've watched this exact argument play out since the amateur days. Every promising young halfback copped the same treatment until someone gave them a proper season, then everyone claimed they'd backed him all along 😄 Back in my day the Tahs greats got backed through the lean derbies, not benched after one bad night at Allianz. Patience was the best selection policy then, and I reckon it still is, eh.Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
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Nah but hold up, you lot hammering Gary while backing the kid off ZERO finals footy either 😅 two derby sharkings and watch this whole thread flip back 🍿Heart with the team, head on pause.
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Give the kid the Sydney derbies and see, that's how every great Tahs half was made. Back him through the sharkings or we'll be having this thread again in five years 😉Watch as long as I have and you'll get it.
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SeenItAll's got it - which of our actually great halves was benching through the derbies at 21? The kid learns nothing from Allianz off the pine.
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GloryDays is right, and the tape backs him. Only caveat: one sharky derby at 21 taught Nick Farr-Jones more than a season on the pine ever would.
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Both camps in this thread are arguing past each other, I reckon. The "give him the derbies" crowd and the "experience for Allianz" crowd are actually describing two different halves of the same season - early rounds when mistakes cost you a spot on the ladder, and the derby window where one bad ten-minute patch can sink your finals maths. Gary's right that we've heard "one season away" before, but he's using it as a blanket dismissal when the sample actually matters: who the kid plays, in what conditions, with what forward platform. I could be wrong, but my honest read is that neither side has the counterfactual. Farr-Jones got his sharky derby and grew from it - fine, n=1, and halfbacks of that era had different protections and a very different scraping pace around the ruck. So the real question nobody's answered yet: what does the kid's game actually lack that pine time fixes, and what does derby pressure fix that training can't?Do the math before you argue.