First Season Ending Injury Albert Vete's knee ruins a promising campaign, team is thin up front.
Biggest Flop Keiran Foran - belatedly gets on the field, plays half hearted, signs with the roosters, gets injured for a bit, goes back to aussie early for family reasons.
Biggest Improvement Issac Luke is not fat and useless to start the year this time. That's an improvement.
Mid Season Release Keiran Foran
New Cult Hero David Fusitua "best winger in the game, best winger EVA!" manu who?
Team Villain Shaun Joh .... who are we kidding, its the COACH, always the coach.
Biggest Game Losing Margin There's a late season away game to Souths when we should be fighting for a playoff spot - you know what that means! a record loss!
Highest Game winning Margin Newcastle
Dumbest Suspension All suspensions are either dumb or a gross miscarriage of justice by the NRL. Or both featuring C.Gubb.
Surprise Signing Peta Hiku. Panthers don't need him,
Kearney likes him.
Most Tries David Fusitua.
Most bombed tries "Solo"mone Kata
Most missed kicks Whoever does the kicking
Rookie of the year Technically not rookies, but Sipley plays good off the bench for the injured Vete and Hingano is promising replacing the walkabout Foran
Expected Finish 10th
Going to be super negative, cos sick of buying the 'this year will be different' line and getting burnt.
It will be another shitter, but that's okay because there is a new expert advisory panel to help
Kearney set things straight. So next year will be different.
Using the "above the line guff"
Some of the younger blokes will have good honest efforts and be above the line.
Some of the older players will try, but are too passed it to get above the line more than occasionally. probably around origin time.
Some of the stars of the team have never been consistently above the line over the last 5 years, why start now? They'll be getting another rich contract from the warriors, the coach won't.
A couple of no hopers won't even know there is a line, possibly deliberately so, so they can get out of here to another club.
Too much is invested in Foran who is not reliable and only has to get cleared and play at a barely acceptable level to get a bigger contract back where he wants to be.
And its not like anyone in the warriors will be able to call him on it, after all, what have they been doing for the last 5, 6 seasons? Talking a good game, and not delivering... Cheers Foz, well played.
