Re: Blake Austin. : Sat May 04, 2019 9:19 pm  

What i love about Austin is that he gets Targeted, gets hit hard and roughed up but rather then just shying away he gets aggressive and just gets stuck in harder and tries to smash them. One of our best signings i've ever seen by a long shot, and if Widdop can come in and be at his best we're gonna be unreal

Re: Blake Austin. : Sat May 04, 2019 10:44 pm  

Smiffy27 wrote:

I think Cas saw it as an opportunity to run at and rough up our main man.
On another issue Blake seemed to be struggling with an injury and didn't look totally happy at times.

I noticed him rubbing his hip after a challenge on one of his early kicks but didn't notice anything after that. He does have a slight lopsided gate i sometimes think is he limping.

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 1:42 pm  

Austin has had a great start but three questions need answering for me before we hail him as one of our best ever signings:

1) Does he have good games against the top teams, in the knock out situations, or is he more a player that carves up weaker sides. If he's the latter it's not necessarily a bad thing, we've struggled in the past to put smaller teams to bed so those players are useful, but the big test will be how does Austin play against the top teams.

2) Related to this is the Nat Wood test (could also be the Greg Mackey test). How does he play when we are behind in a game, or when its a close game, compared to when we are piling up points. Does he pull off big moments when the team is up against it? Nat Wood was probably a less talented player than Austin but he did raise his game when it was needed.

3) Does he maintain his early season form at the end of the season and in to next season. The big question mark over him from Australia was that every time he joins a new club he has a great start and then peters out until his next move.

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 4:05 pm  

....he was far from petering out at his last club...he was unplayable coming off the bench.

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 4:24 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Austin has had a great start but three questions need answering for me before we hail him as one of our best ever signings:

1) Does he have good games against the top teams, in the knock out situations, or is he more a player that carves up weaker sides. If he's the latter it's not necessarily a bad thing, we've struggled in the past to put smaller teams to bed so those players are useful, but the big test will be how does Austin play against the top teams.

2) Related to this is the Nat Wood test (could also be the Greg Mackey test). How does he play when we are behind in a game, or when its a close game, compared to when we are piling up points. Does he pull off big moments when the team is up against it? Nat Wood was probably a less talented player than Austin but he did raise his game when it was needed.

3) Does he maintain his early season form at the end of the season and in to next season. The big question mark over him from Australia was that every time he joins a new club he has a great start and then peters out until his next move.

Well according to the table, hull are one of the top sides and he did pretty well against them! Comparing him to nathan wood is embarrassing

[Winslade's Offload]

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 5:01 pm  

I think a more pertinent question is how far down the league would we fall if we lost Austin to injury.

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 5:41 pm  

Moe syslak wrote:

Well according to the table, hull are one of the top sides and he did pretty well against them! Comparing him to nathan wood is embarrassing

True, Nat Wood was a quality player for us for 4 seasons.

At this stage the better comparison for Austin is Chris Sandow in the first half of 2016. Sandow couldn't maintain it (partly due to injury to be fair) and his influence tailed off by the business end of the season. If we are to be SL champions we will need to beat better teams than Hull.

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 7:04 pm  

The only game he didn’t look influential in was against Saints. The game where our forwards got battered into submission.

Let’s not also forget that he’s pretty much organising all attack on his own as well as talking on the line. Even Price made it clear that the plan was to have Brown organising and Austin carving up with his running. That’s pretty impressive to me.

As much as I liked Wood he doesn’t have anywhere near the all-round game of Austin.

I’m looking forward to assessing him against the 1st placed team when our forwards match them. Might be a different story.

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 9:59 pm  

It's worrying that we keep having this issue of our forwards being battered in to submission.

Happened in the Challenge Cup Final last year and then in the Grand Final as well, these were given on here as the reasons why Patton and Roberts were not able to dictate those games.

Perhaps an overhaul is needed - is it time to take a hard look at old favourites like Hill, Cooper, Westwood, Currie and ask are they able to cut it against the very best packs? What about BMM and Hughes - would Saints and Catalans take them?

Re: Blake Austin. : Sun May 05, 2019 10:37 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Austin has had a great start but three questions need answering for me before we hail him as one of our best ever signings

Are some people really saying that after 14 games? FFS the phenomenon of recency is getting silly now. He's made a very good start - thats all we can say for now.