Newcastle Knights

To be fair, Copley has been pretty good of late too, ever since Gagai left.

Copley's a player I think could eventually leave Brisbane to get an extended run in his actual position (centre) and bite them in the arse. I understand why Brisbane fans don't like him though; I just get a "loser" vibe from him. It's hard to explain but whenever there's a 50/50 involving him I always expect nature to not decide in his favour. The higher the stakes, the more I get this feeling. There have been other players like this through time as well - Daniel Fitzhenry and Jarrod Croker gave me the same feeling. It's a quality separate from actual ability and one that probably doesn't actually exist, but it makes me not really back them to come through when needed... as if they're just terminally unlucky or something. Hard to explain.

 

They've definitely under-performed. I look at their squad and I see a team that should be premiership contenders. Even allowing for the fact that they have a new coach and a few new players, and the fact that Gidley has been out for most of the year, they still should've made the lower half of the top eight, and it doesn't look like they'll do that.

 

No doubt. Look at my posts last year about how it baffled me whenever they actually won a game, and how surprised I was that they didn't end up with the spoon. Then look at my identical posts from 2010. The whole "we don't use props" thing drove me absolutely bonkers.

They addressed the main issues with their squad this year though and on paper they became outside premiership contenders in my eyes. Of course the fact that it was going to take some time to gel the new side with the new coach etc meant they were unlikely to actually challenge, but failure to make the eight this year was an under-performance.