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Australian Rugby / RA

RugbyReg

RugbyReg

Rocky Elsom (76)
Staff member
1) are there any decent highlights videos of Joseph Sua'ali'i out there? Rugby primarily, but any of him walking on water too would be appreciated.

2) team announcements at 10am, RA pushed for a Wednesday arvo/evening cut off but the clubs (coaches) all pushed back.
 
RebelYell

RebelYell

Arch Winning (36)
RugbyReg said:
1)
2) team announcements at 10am, RA pushed for a Wednesday arvo/evening cut off but the clubs (coaches) all pushed back.
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Clubs have normally named teams internally by a Monday afternoon, with minimal changes. Creating an event of it - jsut like the AFL, whose teams are named Thursday night and first revealed by their broadcaster (7) on Melbourne news, is the way to go about it.

It's definitely an improvement on years gone by, but you'd love to be able to know it'll be announced at 7.05pm every Wednesday on Fox Sports News, first before it's elswhere (10-15 min embargo) wouldn't you?
 
drewprint

drewprint

John Solomon (38)
I’ve seen plenty of clips of talented young guys running straight through teams, but not many where they are also peeling off big hits in defence and throwing beautiful long spiral passes both directions. The kid can play!
 
Up the Guts

Up the Guts

Steve Williams (59)
The thing about Joey is he’s a giant but in none of his highlights is he just running it straight over the top of little guys. Those early developers who have a size advantage and just bump up off the little fellas often don’t transition as well to the pro level. He’s straight up beating players with his agility. It doesn’t really matter how old you are, ~100kg stepping at right angles at top pace is hard to stop at any level.
 
sendit

sendit

Bob Loudon (25)
Up the Guts said:
The thing about Joey is he’s a giant but in none of his highlights is he just running it straight over the top of little guys. Those early developers who have a size advantage and just bump up off the little fellas often don’t transition as well to the pro level. He’s straight up beating players with his agility. It doesn’t really matter how old you are, ~100kg stepping at right angles at top pace is hard to stop at any level.
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He must have had some good coaches as well as good natural instinct

Even close to the line where he realistically can steamroll people and still score, he's making the effort to put on footwork and get himself in a good position to offload incase he doesn't make it through
 
WorkingClassRugger

WorkingClassRugger

David Codey (61)
Up the Guts said:
The thing about Joey is he’s a giant but in none of his highlights is he just running it straight over the top of little guys. Those early developers who have a size advantage and just bump up off the little fellas often don’t transition as well to the pro level. He’s straight up beating players with his agility. It doesn’t really matter how old you are, ~100kg stepping at right angles at top pace is hard to stop at any level.
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Heard it last weekend in relation to running toward space. Something like 'running at holes not heads' or something to that effect. Too many big kids seek the contact in order to stream roll their opposition. They becomes solely reliant on it. Young Sua'ali'i hasn't fallen into that trap. Which is very encouraging.
 
B

Bobby Sands

Guest
Sua'ali'i is as polished as you can be at that age.

You buy him, and you develop him with patience.

If he fails, then he does, but the risk/reward for a potential superstar means you deal every time.
 
Quick Hands

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
barbarian said:
Yeah I think this is another tough spot which doesn't have an easy answer for RA.

I liked the idea of the 'fighting fund' to secure talented schoolboys. We lose so much talent to league that it made a lot of sense to try and sign a few top tier youngsters and lock them into our game. And it seems to be working so far, given the influx of young talent in SuperAU, a few of whom were secured with cash from that fund.

Now this Sua'ali'i kid seems to be the white whale, the one who has been on everyone's radar for at least two years. People who are good judges of talent rate him (I've only seen him in one Aus schoolboy game where he looked OK, but he was only in year 10 at the time).

So if you've got a fund for gun youngsters, and this bloke is a gun, then we'd be doing a disservice to the game not to at least table an offer.

But the media circus leaves me a bit uncomfortable, noting that it seems the leaks are coming from Souths rather than RA or the Sua'ali'i camp (he doesn't have an agent, which makes me like him a lot more). In an ideal world you'd leave him to finish school, but sadly that world doesn't exist anymore and I'm not sure we can afford to have the moral high ground here.

So we make a reasonable offer, tie a few pretty bows on it (eg Olympics) and see how it goes. Which again it seems like they have done, provided today's figures are correct and not the $3m being thrown around on Tuesday.

But anything approaching $500k will cause problems for RA, and fair enough too. Not to mention put undue pressure on the kid.
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There's nothing wrong with having a fund to use to develop young players and to keep them in rugby. In fact there's everything right about it. It's the conduct of the process in the full glare of the 24 hour news cycle which is a problem.

But we're now into the 5th or 6th day of multiple newspaper articles speculating on the possible signing of a 16 year old school kid complete with the whole union v league thing and ludicrous sums of money being mentioned. It's just wrong on so many levels and I can't believe that any adult involved in league, union or the journalists think that this circus is appropriate. It's not a question of the moral high ground, it's just what's right and what's not. I don't know who's been leaking, whether it's Souths or RA or NSWRU or a combination of them. It's fairly clear though that the article below from yesterday's SMH is from NSWRU with Penney and Hooper both contributing.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...open-doors-for-Sua'ali'i-20200723-p55er5.html

Surely we've reached the point where any responsible adult who is asked by the media about this now says something like "We're talking about a 16 year old boy. We're making no further public comment because we believe that the well-being of the boy is paramount."
 
KOB1987

KOB1987

Rod McCall (65)
Quick Hands said:
There's nothing wrong with having a fund to use to develop young players and to keep them in rugby. In fact there's everything right about it. It's the conduct of the process in the full glare of the 24 hour news cycle which is a problem.

But we're now into the 5th or 6th day of multiple newspaper articles speculating on the possible signing of a 16 year old school kid complete with the whole union v league thing and ludicrous sums of money being mentioned. It's just wrong on so many levels and I can't believe that any adult involved in league, union or the journalists think that this circus is appropriate. It's not a question of the moral high ground, it's just what's right and what's not. I don't know who's been leaking, whether it's Souths or RA or NSWRU or a combination of them. It's fairly clear though that the article below from yesterday's SMH is from NSWRU with Penney and Hooper both contributing.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...open-doors-for-Sua'ali'i-20200723-p55er5.html

Surely we've reached the point where any responsible adult who is asked by the media about this now says something like "We're talking about a 16 year old boy. We're making no further public comment because we believe that the well-being of the boy is paramount."
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His manager maybe?
 
Rob42

Rob42

John Solomon (38)
KOB1987 said:
His manager maybe?
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He doesn't have a manager, apparently, which is both pleasing and concerning. I think RA's comments have been pretty sensible so far, but I agree, it would be best to just shut up now and do the deal behind closed doors.
 
Derpus

Derpus

George Gregan (70)
Have RA actually made any statements? i think someone posted an article on the Rugby au site saying the 3 mil was nonsense and then there were some fairly benign comments from the Penney and Hooper.

Someone is playing silly buggers.
 
Wilson

Wilson

David Codey (61)
Derpus said:
Have RA actually made any statements? i think someone posted an article on the Rugby au site saying the 3 mil was nonsense and then there were some fairly benign comments from the Penney and Hooper.

Someone is playing silly buggers.
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Yeah, the 3 million is only being reported by a couple of league journos, all the rugby (and a few league) writers have the rugby offer at around 200,000-300,000 a season, significantly less than south's $1.7 million over 3 years.

If he has come over to rugby it's because of the Olympics and the chance to play super rugby this year, and then maybe someone in league (probably at souths) is pissed that they lost him and trying to cover their arse by stirring the pot, making rugby look bad.
 
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