I've said this before, but we REALLY NEED TO LOOK AT WHAT THE PENNIES HAVE DONE over the last few seasons.
A new "Tactician"!
A "Young" Coach with current, fresh ideas and is familiar with how the game is played in today's world!
Someone more like Brown, Noddy or dare I say it Johns!!!
Then we need to stop being a retirement village for over priced, unwanted by their current club players.
Penrith have a team full of exciting young players, sprinkled with a few old heads.
We have an ageing "has been" side and leave out our exciting young guns in ressies and under 20's.
Let's start by swapping out the following this year;
Lewis doesn't come back - he is always injured anyway
Prior for Houma
Gordon and move Holmes from the wing to fullback
Gagan onto the wing vacated by Holmes
Bird on the bench (maybe for Arona who is good backrow depth if Buks, Toops or Hinney get injured).
A half! Maybe it's time to see what Murphy can do in the NRL (Granted Robbo has been great defensively, but we need some attacking flair and Robbo doesn't have it) the other option is to drop Barba for Murphy and have him play alongside Robbo but I don't see that happening.
So based on our current list, we should look at playing this side and look to recruit around filing the gaps of the players mentioned above and a few of the older back rowers.
1. Holmes (WILL attack every bomb that comes near him and won't let in bounce - FFS Gordon)
2. Feki
3. Leutele
4. Beale
5. Gagan
6. Barba (or Murphy)
7. Murphy (or Robbo) depending on which of the current halves gets dropped
8. Fifita D (to show what his Bro should be doing)
9. Ennis (who must now be wondering WTF have I got myself into???)
10. Gal (FFS play FR and get out of the way in our attacking qtr)
11. Buks
12. Graham
13. Hinno
14. Bird (Another that MUST be in the NRL side).
15. Fifita A (cooling his heals until the last 20 of the first half).
16. Toops
17. Houma
I'd also like to see the fifita brothers on the paddock at the same time during a game. Has that happened yet? I reckon they would murder it if they are on at the same time.
Let's see how that younger team goes and make a decision on which areas to target for recruitment for next year (halves and a few new young backrowers are the obvious choices).
Clearly Flanno is going to keep using the same old same old and by the time he decides to change things, we are already out of finals contention.