Our attack was a little all over the shop and you can tell there are still problems there. DCE or Walker would shake off a tackle and have no support runners close to the opposition line. But I can’t fault Manly’s defence.

For a team with two props playing, one of them being Nate Myles we played ridiculously well.

As the guy that wrote it, your guess is as good as mine.

I hope you are watching this Dragons game. I really, really hope. It is proving why I am so down on Moylan. He has missed tackles, as made positional errors a plenty and is choking under the pressure the Penrith forwards are putting on him.

Feel free to be a blind and wrong Penrith fan all you want. Feel free to twist every single stat and ignore anything bad Moylan does all you want if it helps you sleep at night. I have never in my life seen a more overrated player. At least Jarryd Hayne fans don’t think he is a perfect untouchable messiah.

Seriously, with Mansour gone watch Moylan do a kick return or watch him defend a line break. Then after a few weeks if he has proven me wrong I will eat my humble pie, but if I am right then please at least admit he isn’t the best thing in the universe to ever exist.

These are some fearless predictions. If Souths make the 8 I will be surprised but I wouldn’t be surprised if 1, 2 and 5 actually occur.

I have, by multiple people. Though mostly by casual fans, probably because Gould is too busy blowing hot air up his arse.

Penrith have a lot of attacking weapons all over the park. It is shown by the stats of Moylan, Cleary and Martin that they can produce points in spades and will trouble even the better defending sides in the comp. However my issue is over their halves if they can produce the goods consistently, since rookies halves have trouble gelling together at times and also the defence and discipline of their players.

I think Penrith will be a team that will just have games where they are defensively frail like they did last year, that is just what happens when you have a team full of players this young. Also during Origin they are gonna struggle, considering Merrin, Moylan and Tamou at the very least will get picked leaving a huge hole in the forwards and the attack meaning they will struggle over this period.

Penrith will have a bit of a battle when it comes to spots on the park with their depth, which is always good especially if you have the injury history of this club.

However I think they are still at least a year away from winning the premiership. The team has changed too much over the past 2 years and the side (especially the spine) will need a year or two to gel before they can start firing again. Specifically I think they will beat the Roosters in round one of the finals before being knocked out by the Titans in round 2.

You really think I hate Penrith huh? Wow.

Funny, I get told I hate teams that I put low. I got told I hate the Rabbitohs when I put them in the bottom four, I got told I hate the Dragons when I put them at 15th, I got told I hate the club I support because I put them at 11th.

I must just be a ball of hatred towards teams mustn’t I?

Nah a Manly fan actually.

His defensive outputs that put him behind Friend, Smith, Rein, Lichaa, Ennis and Hodgson in total tackles for dummy halves?

And what does he offer in attack. Show me, because you going ‘oh he combines with Clearly and Moylan perfectly’ is just as baseless as you say my claim is. Give me examples.

So you are applying a statement someone said about the 2015 Panthers and are then just projecting that onto me as if it is my opinion huh? Well in my opinion the Panthers underachieved massively in 2015 so I hope that makes you feel good.

Here is my big issue with you, you are acting like I think Penrith won’t make the 8 and they have no quality and every player on their team sucks and what not. I don’t think that, I put Penrith fifth for crying out loud, which is above the Warriors (who don’t even make my 8) and the Broncos.

You are complaining and whining and winging at an article that put you guys in the top 3rd of the competition because ‘oh you said bad things about Gus Gould and you think Matt Moylan isn’t a good kick returner and Cartwright is undisciplined’. Like, if you are so damn convinced that your team isn’t overrated show me the proof. I want cold hard stats and comparisons that prove that every Penrith player is overrated.

But you are right I am totally biased against Penrith. You got me, they should be minor premiers and they should never lose a game and their only weakness should be that they make every other team in the comp just so jealous with how great they are. You got me, I am so wrong I should just castrate myself under the name of the great and totally unbiased commentator Gus Gould.

You wanted my stats? I just made two comments to expand my issues with Moylan, Cartwright and RGC.

Onto Reagan Campbell Gillard. As a starting forward he made 9.9 runs a game and each run made on average 9.5 metres which comes to 93.2 metres a game. Compare him to Jake Trbojevic who makes 13.7 runs a game at 8.5 metres a run to make 116 metres a game and then David Klemmer who makes 17.7 runs a game at 9.4 metres a run to make a total of 165.5 metres a game. So whilst he makes more metres a run his contribution numbers are much smaller meaning his total metres gained is significantly less than these two, but how about tackles? Well RCG makes 22.4 tackles a game whilst Trbojevic makes 37.3 a game and Klemmer makes 25.8 tackles a game. Additionally RCG misses a tackle every 9.5 tackles whilst Trbojevic misses one ever 29.6 tackles and Klemmer every 14.9 tackles. Offloads maybe? 6 from RGC compared to 18 and 14 from Trbojevic and Klemmer respectively. How is he even considered that good if you take a hard look at stats?

As for Bryce Cartwright, I can’t fault his offloads or anything like that. But at an error count of 33 and with 15 penalties conceded I don’t think he is an elite player. You can’t be an elite player with discipline errors this large. Also, he made 77 missed tackles this year meaning for every 8.8 tackles he missed one, which is worse than RGC. He is just too error prone and defensively iffy to me to be considered for State of Origin yet.

Okay, let’s back up my claims then. Firstly I said Matt Moylan’s kick returns were non existent. Now whilst I don’t know how to get number of kick returns, I can find that Moylan made 555 metres on kick returns. Which I believe is the least amount of kick return metres in the game with players like Will Hopoate (1256) and Cam Munster (1236) more than doubling his stats in this department. In fact his metres game in general is weak compared to your Tedesco, Trbojevic and Munster. Moylan in a game makes 15.7 runs at 7.3 metres per run. Compare this to Tedesco (14 runs at 9.7 metres per game), Trbojevic (16.7 runs at 9.9 metres per game) and Munster (18 runs at 8.9 metres per game). And they completely outclass him.

As for Moylan’s positioning problems there isn’t a stat I can reference for this. This is why Moylan comes out so well statistically, the small weaknesses in his game don’t have easy to find stats. All I can do is reference moments and games, which I will. His positioning at fullback in the first two State of Origin games was terrible, with a lack of communication occurring frequently between him and his wingers, resulting in many balls that could be caught on the full to bounce forward an extra 10 metres or so and it also caused a fair chunk of errors.

And it might come down to personal opinion but I want a fullback that can do your fast running kick returns and speed stuff (which Moylan can’t do that well) that also can set up a try or two (which Moylan is probably the best in the game at). It comes down to personal preference maybe but you compare Moylan to the last two great Fullbacks in Brett Stewart and Billy Slater in their primes and they both had their positional play and metre gaining down whilst also creating plenty of opportunities and tries.

I don’t have time to make really in depth articles between univeristy and work and stuff with having to do one of these every day. But when I get back from work tonight I will just for the Penrith fans here I will expand my point, provide examples and stats and all of that good stuff.

But I do love how one person who disagrees with me has brought stats to the table to prove their point and no one else has. Hilarious.

RCG is a fine workhorse prop but you see him being compared to the elite young props in the game and it baffles me. He just isn’t as good as the likes of Jake Trbojevic and David Klemmer. But people try to say he should be in origin and stuff, which he shouldn’t.

I also think they will finish top 5 too. Granted only just but they will still scrape in.

I think it is possible for them to win it but just don’t see it with their coach.

Thank you for being a fan. Comments like this make this all worth it, I really appreciate it.

Can you double check that because the Tigers are 12th on my ladder? The Tigers came 9th last year but I think they will come 12th this year. I put them above the Bulldogs by one rung mainly because of Tedesco, if he remains injury free I think he will have a Dally M winning season.

I haven’t posted my article on the team I think will come 9th yet.

If you look at my summary I do say I won’t be surprised if they make the 8. In my opinion there is very little separating the teams from 14th to 7th. So I had to be ruthless and the Des stuff and the lack of attacking structure late last year meant I had to push them down the pecking order.

I do want to say that I didn’t want to put them this low. Just like I didn’t want to put the Bunnies or the Tigers as low as they are. However, when you are ranking out teams you need to be ruthless, and there is a logjam between 14th and 7th in my opinion where there is very little separating the teams in terms of quality.

I rate the Bulldogs squad almost as much as a rate the Roosters squad for example. However, when I had to rank them I just saw the lacklustre spine of 2016 and the Des stuff and decided that they are that low.

I agree with a lot of your points, but I just couldn’t put them higher.

I will be honest, I do think I should have switched them with the team I have coming fifth along with some other shuffles. But it was too late to re-arrange my ladder since I was a third of the way through my previews at that point.

This was written before the Zeb Taia thing happened.

Depth is an important thing for all teams, which is why I value it so highly and teams with terrible depth (like the Rabbitohs) are punished so harshly in my ladder. I think the difference between teams this year is non-existent, and in scenarios like this it comes down to the quality of players outside your top 17.

I thought they weren’t going to do well last year and I was proven correct though and I don’t see how any of their problems have been fixed.

Greg Inglis is a year older and has been injured since 2015, Reynolds gets injured every damn year, Farrah sucks and their depth is terrible.

I know am a lot more down on them than most but I have no idea what people see in them. I just don’t. Maybe I am blind and I will have so much egg on my face I can make a years supply of omelettes but they just aren’t a strong side anymore.

I don’t understand the high expectations people have for the Rabbitohs in 2017. 2016 wasn’t disappointing for the Rabbitohs since anyone that thought they were gonna make the 8 with that squad was either a biased fan or just wrong. And they won’t make the 8 this year either.