I hear that. I'd go further at the moment and play him in the middle. Not permanently, but while we have BHU and Dale out, we struggle to pull the wagon IMO. I'd have a middle rotation of Tolman, Rudolph, Pele, Hunt, Talakai and Macinnes next week. Assuming Williams, Fifita, BHU and Dale are injured. I realise we then have a centre problem, but just draft one of the backups.
Official Siosifa Talakai
- Thread starter snowman
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Sparkles
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North paw?
Anything that worked in Rocky III is worth doing
Sparkles
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No, it's all outrageous fiction. Who'd believe the US and Russia being so antagonistic towards each other?
On a side note... this from the Wiki page:
"Stallone and Ludgren engaged in authentic punching in their fight, which led to Stallone being admitted to intensive care"
Rock III was Clubber Lang mate. I don't make **** up!
Sparkles
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All of the Rocky's except the one with Hulk Hogan were total fiction mate, it doesn't matter what number it was!
Shortfin Mako
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Wasn’t he chasing chickens in that movie? No, RIII is the one with the 25 yard butterfly swimming and beach running. OK boys, hit the Caringbah pool and then to the beach.
There is no tomorrow. Eye of the tiger baby.
No we're cookin
HaroldBishop
Jaws
We definitely should get our recruiters down to Wanda on a Saturday morning.
That is gold! Never heard that one. The hits were slow as a wet week, but they looked good otherwise.
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He's not playing any worse and the opposition haven't "worked him out" The team dominating the ruck will make time and space for their outside backs. For a few weeks there, it was the Sharks doing that on a weekly basis and Talakai was the beneficiary. The last few games he's still doing the tough carries out of trouble and has still done well when occasionally given time and space - but it's not there for him as often anymore because the Sharks are losing the middle third battle. Broncos games the Sharks middles got completely dominated.
HaroldBishop
Jaws
Yep, he does this more than just about any other centre in the game and does it well.
Tell you what though, watching Penrith the other night, man their back three are phenomenal, so good.
Proud Shark
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Yep. Edwards and To'o are two of the very best in the league at it.
HaroldBishop
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May is pretty good as well
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Ramien's not too shabby either.
HaroldBishop
Jaws
Doesn't seem to take as many hitups as Talakai. That's not a knock on Jesse btw, he's very good in that area as well.
Takes approx 1/3 as many 1 pass hit ups, although leads Sifa in dummy half runs 6 to nothing.
Regardless of whether one is on a better side for it given targeted kicks or not the numbers do suggest Talakai takes more.
Side v side Talakai+Ronnie averages 14, Ramien+Katoa averages 11 (with Katoa doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this side)
HaroldBishop
Jaws
Yeah I'm certainly not complaining, both great at taking effective hitups. Just don't agree with the criticism by some of Talakai.
Yeah as Burg said, we are playing badly and losing the ruck.
The correction to that is not to move Talakai from centre because 'teams have figured him out' it is to not play like knobs and to actually get back to winning in the middle so he has some time and space.
Someone can argue moving him because they think he'd be more effective for team in the middle (or edge) if they want but it's certainly not him specifically losing us games at the moment from centre, or us doing well everywhere else and can't win because teams are shutting specifically just him down.
It starts in the middle for us at the moment.
We are 4-1 in games BHU has finished (4-2 he's played but him and Dale both went off injured and it was against Storm).
Games where at least one of BHU or Dale finishes the game healthy we are 5-1 games where neither plays or neither finishes game healthy we are 1-3 (and we only played one good half in the one we won).
Funnily enough we go better with our best middles on the park.