okay, ill do my best to retell the chat with Seibold without blabbing on too long.
he was just sitting down in the pub with about 4 mates for about 20-30 minute's so i thought it would be a good time to have a chat with him. i knew if i said something he didn't like to begin with he would turn me away so i started with something quite simple for me.
I said to him you gotta be playing koula left centre not right centre because we already have enough attacking threats (his terminology from press conferences) in olakau'ata and saab on the right side and he will be only getting the ball like 1 in 5 times, compared to if you play him left centre he will be the strike attacking threat. his response was "yea mate that's actually what we doing this year we trying to get him more involved this year and we feel that's on the left side" or something very similar, then i just said yea and hopefully tom can give him a few pointers in how to become a roaming centre like he was in origin and he's like yea exactly.
at this stage he was actually really committed to the conversion, then my mate was just giving praise about the manly way and seibs was talking for like a minute on how they thought it's a really good opportunity for the fans to get an insight for the season.
then this is the part i found controversial when i said the starting team is looking pretty set for round 1, 1 clear battle that stands out to me is either tuipilotu or vaega for that left wing spot. to my suprise his response in a confident tone was we got jaxon paulo who we just have signed, then i asked him do you recon he is a big enough for those tackle 2 carriers coming out of our own end because we got saab who is another lighter weighted winger and he won't be doing too much of those. his response was still very confident in saying "yes he is big enough". so to me all pre season so far ive had tuipilotu starting left wing because rays defensive decisions aren't good enough for nrl atm but if paulo who is an aerial threat, great finisher and apparently big enough to take tackle 2 and 3 hit ups that could turn into being a great signing.
then we were talking about the signings for a bit and being very complementary, then i gave him my idea of the signing of waddell most people will just see as an average signing as our 2nd second row cover, but don't you think you can tranform him into a similar path of ethan bullemor. when bullemor came to manly he was in a similar boat of a backup second rower but a transition into a bench middle forward with leg speed will be a lot more productive move especially with the speed of the game increasing and manlys lack of middle forwards in recent years. his eyes lit up it was funny, he said yea in the off season we try and prepare the boys for a few positions and roles and that's definately one we are looking for corey.
at this stage i feel like i was flying but idk if i took it too far when i said this but i honestly feel this needed to be said and fans that have watch manly in recent years surely agree. i said by no means i mean to be racist but i feel we have a tend to when we concede 1 we have a knack of conceding 2 or sometimes 3, and it's not the opposition getting much better, i feel its sometimes our international players not communicating when the times get tuff. i then said like a simple way you could help fix that is getting players like paseka and koula to run warm ups at training to help them gain confidence with communicating and leading.
to seibs credit he said na mate your complete right and that's a decent idea you raise but we have directly talked about what you said and this year we will be looking at more short kick offs to change the momentum and get the ball back. now at the time i didn't say this but i feel that's taking the soft cock option out of it, coming from a cricket background if the bowler is on top of you with the ball swinging and bouncing around you gotta back your defence and dig deep and show some resilience instead of having a swing and high risk of getting out then telling your team mates oh well just wasn't my day. i just feel there should be a higher priority on defence rather than overplaying attack because if they get the ball back, tackle 2 they are already in our half.
now at this stage i don't why but seibs is still very invested, maybe the guys he were with were boring or because he's actually interested about the thoughts of a 19 year old. but then after about 5 agreements we hit our first disagreement...
i said i recon jakey should be playing 65-70 minutes not 80 because he doesn't run the ball in the last 15 minutes and that puts a lot of pressure on our other middle forwards especially if we only players 2 of them off the bench. then im like you can play gordy like 30 mintues and croker 65 but when they on together you player croker 13. his response was mate i respect your opinion but i got to disagree with you, we need jake out there. then im like yea i can see why he's so important to the teams defensive,
then i thought it would be rude to go on after he disagreed with something so we had to leave it there, i said thanks mate for the chat best of luck for the reason and his response was mate thanks for the really good insights it was good having a chat with you. then we left it there.
i was so ready to go into more depth into that last bit though because what i took out from that whole chat was that he wants paulo left wing and jake to play 80. and the result of both of those 2 is that that's extra work for our middle forwards. so i would've asked him about so would you be looking to play gordy at 14 plus 3 middle forwards off the bench, aka sipley, aloiai and bullemor (lodge and paseka starting, all of this when full strength). but this means yes we are covered in our middles now but if there if there is an injury to an outside back in game we need bullemor to play centre as to fit the 3 middles we can't have burbo in 17 who would be replacing any second row or centre injury. so i know it may seem a little far fetched and i know i may of lost some of you along the may and this maybe a little unique thought but for manly to be successful this year we need bullemor to be able to cover centre for us in game!
sorry for that being long and probably like 10 different discussion points but i didn't feel like spreading it all in different threads rather just say it in 1.
if anyone has any questions or thoughts im keen for ur point of of view
