Spirited end to the season on Saturday night vs the Broncos. It was a poor start to proceedings, being down 12-0 after 10 mins with a player in the sin bin, and it could easily have become a blowout. But we bit down, showed some flair with the ball and made a real game of it (it finished 38-30). Maybe had the Nanai try been given the all clear (it was ruled a knock on by the bunker after 234 looks) or the Waters try been pulled up (for a forward pass) we could have seen the locals pull off a win.
At the end of the day we ran a top 4 team, that's still fighting for table position, to the wire. I think that's the disappointment of 2025. Our best was bloody good, but our worst was bloody awful. And we regularly swung between both extremes in the space of minutes.
I was dredging few some of my RL sites I use for match & season stats, and came across this:
We top the comp for errors, handling errors, ineffective tackles. We're also on top for missed tackles. That's the story of our season right there. We lead the comp in metres gained, have the best try assist merchant in the comp in Drinky (he's also top 5 for linebreak assists), and are top 8 for tries scored. Our attack is plenty good enough.
Todd has seemingly survived the axe for now, but the pressure is on for next season to be significantly better. Hopefully Luki comes back strong, BigJase plays closer to 20 games than 10 next season (as he's still playing elite football an has a massive impact on our win/loss), and Reed Mahoney slots in neatly. We definitely need a defensive coach in 2026 though - we ran without one in 2025 and we defended like a broken sieve - only the Titans conceded more points than us (and that's hardly a badge of honour).
Also hoping we get close to a full season out of Vailea & Muzz. They played only 14 and 15 games respectively in 2025. And we don't have a lot of depth in our three quarter line (especially with Semi seemingly going overseas).
A few additional player signings wouldn't go astray either, but they need to be people who are going to push for a place in our top 17. "Depth" signings are a waste of cash.
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