Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs

wizard333 wrote:Don't know if he burnt all his bridges as an Eels junior but he could be a cheap "project".

If anyone can get the best of of Suli.......Arthur can!

Ice wrote:

If anyone can get the best of of Suli.......Arthur can!

Goes without saying

MrCashman wrote:Suli turned up to training late on many occasions with a bucket of KFC tucked under his arm lol

if thats true he is now my hero

One that did get reported at the Tigers, he got a lift to training with one of the guys, he had a rehab session and slept in the car the whole session

don't mind the team

Pay rewarded good trial form for fualalo (starting over elliot who was first expected to be lock) Danny has always played well when given extended minutes, i think he is more likely to have a big year then the more fancied RFM, to me RFM is still a flash in the pan type player, hope he has improved the areas of his game. That being said, only way to find out is for him to play extended minutes so keen to see him as a starter.

marshall-king and eastwood grabbed the last 2 spots with good trial form, eastwood playing for a contract may bring out some good footy from him again.

i would have liked tualau to be there someway but its early days


Don't think i'll ever be a frawley fan but he was the safe option, we've got a tough start to the year, if we lose a few as expected, i wouldn't be shocked for cleeland to get a run 4 or 5 rounds in if the halves ain't working out

I'm tipping the Doggies to spring an upset round one and surprise all year under pay. I've locked them into my top 8.

2 things were pretty evident coming out of that game

1. Our offense looks a hell of alot more threatening
2. The diffence in class between us and the storm is huge

we mostly played well, stayed in the game for long periods but storm just had a few individual moments that kept putting them a good lead ahead, to good

biggest positives

Mbye looked very comfortable fullback, it really seems to suit his skill set.
Foran looked healthy and played really well
Both Fualalo and RFM were strong, need them to maintain that form if our pack is any chance to be above average

a few players struggled but eastwood is the only one who i struggle to see returning to form, it just doesn't like he has it in him anymore, he has had some really good moments for the club but he looks done, the team would be much better suited with a high impact player like tulau, ogden or to'omaga off the bench


biggest negative is the chooks result, they're likely to pretty switched on come friday and it will be march harder to remain positive being 0-2

leaguegod wrote:2 things were pretty evident coming out of that game

1. Our offense looks a hell of alot more threatening
2. The diffence in class between us and the storm is huge

we mostly played well, stayed in the game for long periods but storm just had a few individual moments that kept putting them a good lead ahead, to good

biggest positives

Mbye looked very comfortable fullback, it really seems to suit his skill set.
Foran looked healthy and played really well
Both Fualalo and RFM  were strong, need them to maintain that form if our pack is any chance to be above average

a few players struggled but eastwood is the only one who i struggle to see returning to form, it just doesn't like he has it in him anymore, he has had some really good moments for the club but he looks done, the team would be much better suited with a high impact player like tulau, ogden or to'omaga off the bench


biggest negative is the chooks result, they're likely to pretty switched on come friday and it will be march harder to remain positive being 0-2

Yep, MBye and RFM looked great, didn't really pay any attention to Fualalo. And good to see Foran relaxed, he sounded good in the interview I saw. Like good as in all good, not fake for the media good.

Also, on behalf of all WA NRL fans, I would like to sincerely thank your club LG, because they were the only ones who had Cheerleaders at the game

i was surprised we had cheer leaders when i saw them at the fan day tbh, i was wondering if they had just got some local girls to be bulldogs cheer leaders for a few days lol

well that was gross

2 of the biggest worries heading in were mbye at fullback and can foran still play, those 2 have actually looked really good and we've still be well off the pace.

i think our biggest issue is our roster just isn't there, bench lacks impact (we do need to find a taker for tolman, he doesn't have a role here that suits his ability anymore), the morris boys are on their last legs, frawley is a ressie halve at best. i think as bad as the 2 results have been most of the player have probably player at their level, it just isn't good enough to hang with those teams

the one player who i think has been well below his status is klemmer, woods seems to be an easy target on social media but he did some good things during both games. Klemmer puts on a rep jumper and run and tackles hard every minute he is out there, puts on a bulldog jumper and turn into this guy just going through the motions, he had a really strong 2016 for us but since then his club level has been meh. it wasn't long ago we had to worry about suspensions with him because he was to aggressive, i think he has offset that by becoming to passive. outside of RFM, most of our other forwards arn't guys who punch through the line, Klem can when in the right frame of mind and he needs to pull his finger out and lead this pack but being aggressive.

penny and souths in back to back weeks will probably gives us a better read of where we are at, as in whether its a 13th-16th type season or an 8th-12th

felt like luck evaded us the first 2 weeks, whenever the game got to a critical point, we'd have somthing random go against us

luck certainly swayed towards us last night, the first mbye try should have been no try, the hoppa try was flukey and cleary got injured


but i'm still gonna take it! haha

Mbye is killing it a fullback, he will have down games but he looks like a constant threat back there, every time he is given a broken defensive line, he looks like he is gonna split them open.

klem ran harder

jeremy marshall-king played with himself, still showed glimpses of his running game, looked like a tougher defender/player then i was expecting

geez foz takes some punishment, can see why he always gets injured, not afraid to take a hit at the line

leaguegod wrote:
jeremy marshall-king played with himself,

that was easily the most frustrating of our losses so far

the 2nd half errors were terrible, just kept giving them the ball and when we played so long without mbye and tolman, we needed possession to even up or it would cost us and in the end we were jsut let stroll down to steal that game, we looked buggered


i still can't cop that first souths try, its pretty unacceptable imo for a ref to call the captain from the right centre spot only to let the other team play on right away and give us no chance to cover, to me, thats easily the biggest ref fuck up of the year, thats not a split moment decision, that just should not ever happen

yeap totally agree. That was a massive fuck up. He apologised for it but that doesnt change the fact he his decision caused a try.

Souths were too good. Stop whinging. Easy game plan. Smash Mbye....game over.

its pretty fair call re mbye, foz seems to be able to create space fairly well but no one outside of mbye is capable of doing anything with it


last night certainly showed our limitations, there are quite a number of players who just arn't up to it, they've had long stints and first grade and just don't really improve(outside of RFM who has taken some good steps forward this year).

There isn't much to replace them with atm because our cap is completely fucked, just 5-6 years of terrible roster decisions. its pretty hard to not see us winning the spoon tbh, we're almost certainly gonna lose the next 4 and that leaves 1-8 and its ahrd to get any confidence after that

Montoya is a pretty strong ball runner but he keeps getting caught out, it just hasn't stopped happening and he has over a season of first grade now

Elliot just should not be in first grade, showed some good signs mid last year, was tripe to end the year and looks even worse now, good thing we re-signed him after his best period of footy


eastwood played ok last night but can't wait for his contract to come off the books

Fualolo gets a pass mark but he outside of klem, jacko and RFM, he is probably our 4th best forward and he should not be your clubs 4th best forward.

Holland - surely we have better option in the ouside backs then a guy who simply does not have a 2nd gear

JMK - hard to be to harsh on him, pretty composed player for a rookie but he looks lost in the red zone even when he does have time, just doesn't look creating points, seems more like a player like foran rather then someone who should be playing next to foran


i love the morris boys, they're still doing good things but we can't bring them back for anything less then massive pay cuts, we need to much help in other positions to be paying them what we are

despite the bagging he is gonna cop because of his profile, i can deal with woods, i can't deal with having both woods and tolman on big money, thats just a gigantic fuck up and we need to find a buyer for tolman for 2019, even if we have to pay some for the year or 2. his injury probably cruels our chances of that happening this year

Des is copping a fair bit of blame in regards to how fuck our cap is, he does deserve that criticism but the warning signs were there when manly were left just as stranded with back ended deals when he left them. castle, Dib, even greenburg can share some of the blame too, it can't jsut be the coach that fucked the cap.

I do feel if castle was a male, she would have been much more heavily scrutinized for the job she did at the club

I feel for pay, he legit probably needs atleast 3 seasons to show progress, our fans are idiots who will want a quick turn around from the last few seasons and its just not gonna happen.

leaguegod wrote:Des is copping a fair bit of blame in regards to how fuck our cap is, he does deserve that criticism but the warning signs were there when manly were left just as stranded with back ended deals when he left them. castle, Dib, even greenburg can share some of the blame too, it can't jsut be the coach that fucked the cap.

I do feel if castle was a male, she would have been much more heavily scrutinized for the job she did at the club

I feel for pay, he legit probably needs atleast 3 seasons to show progress, our fans are idiots who will want a quick turn around from the last few seasons and its just not gonna happen.

Yeah I tend to agree mate and I genuinely think some fans fail to realise that these clubs are run like a business and not a fantasy team.

The coaches may well make player recommendations but at the end of the day, surely they aren't writing the cheques and managing the cap.
If they are they shouldn't be - so again that is an issue with management.

The same applies for the situation with Bennett at Newcastle and the contracts that he was copping a bit of criticism for lately.....but we've already discussed that enough for the time being.

For what it's worth, I think Des has copped it a bit unfairly here also and I also think the previous Dogs board made some good decisions.......but it also appears they also made some bad ones.

I also think they have made the right call going forward with the new board and their agenda of trying to get back their old culture.

Will clearly be a tough year (or two) but fans are just going to have to be patient.

I don't think you can blame the coach for the cap. How many times have we heard a coach at a club over the cap or with shonky 3rd party deals and 2 contracts say "nothing to do with me". And as much as part of me wants to say "how could you not know". I do believe them. It's a business I don't hire a coach to manage my books. Sure he knows what market value is and he plays the part of gilding the lily when the player comes to check things out and needs a phone call to sway him. But he's not paid to balance the books.

Looking at it as a business:

My coach tells HR he wants Dip
HR goes out to hire him.
HR goes to GM and says we can but will have to cut someone on $X or backend $X into year 3.
GM thinks backending will fuck us because we have X,Y,Z already backended & coach wants Pieman when he comes off contract next year so we can't afford to backend.
GM says to coach you have to get rid of either player A,B or C if you want Dip.

yeah my allocation of blame for des start and ends with the players he decided to buy, retain, let go, i think he would have played a big role in choosing which player he got

i think because of that, he still has carry some blame for how the cap has been spent because if we were in a terrible position but still had a solid roster, you'd atleast be able to justify it. but he made some massive blunders in regards to who we signed, who we re-signed and who we lost.

how we got the players des wanted in the first place is all on castle/dib and probably started happening right back at the start when toddy was still there, its probably snowballed from the start and CEO & chairman fucked up by letting it get so out of control

how anyone ever thought greg eastwood should ever be on 900k for any year is beyond me, that just never would have made any sense, in any situation

nor does signing both aaron woods and aiden tolman in the same year for 4 highly paid years, sign 1, fine, but both ? what the fuck, why