Cowboys up for Kalyn challenge
THERE might be plenty of talk around him off the field, but for us it is all about what he can do on the field and Kalyn Ponga is just as good as they say.
I got to see it first hand when he was developing his game at the Cowboys.
We used to see what he could do at training. If he wasn’t up in first grade, we would all sit down and watch a bit of the under-20s games and you would see him do some special things. He always had the potential.
But none of it comes from me. I used to just sit back and watch, clap my hands and think ‘how good is this?’ Some of the things that he is doing, the individual brilliance, it can’t be coached.
He is very hard to defend against because he can beat anyone one-onone, or even when he is up against two he still manages to get away with it. Defensively it will be a challenge, but one that I think we are up for.
He will come down our right hand side a lot, towards myself, (Shane) Wright, Tom Opacic and (Kyle) Feldt. We will have a real job to do.
I am confident we can stand up to the challenge. I think Wrighty has been going really good the past couple of weeks.
He is a real underrated type of player. He gets through a lot of work, he has been playing 80 minutes a game and he has only had a handful of NRL experience. To be doing that consistently and doing it well, he is going really well.
We have trained well again this week, which is what has been one good thing for our season. We have always bounced back and trained well, and worked hard to improve. There have been a few results that really could have gone either way.
It makes it hard. You look at the season as a whole in the win-loss record and it looks like we have really struggled – at times we have struggled this year but at times we have really put ourselves into games but just couldn’t close out the results.
Last week was a perfect example of that and it has really been a story of our season.
I also want to wish the Kirwan Bears plenty of luck when they head away to Brisbane for the state finals of the Schoolboy Cup.
It is hard to cheer for them sometimes given how much of a proud Iggy Park boy I am, but I will make an exception this time after they won the Aaron Payne Cup.
We had it on in the sheds before the game with Brisbane, we watched a little bit of it. We have a couple of Brendan’s boys in the team as well as a couple of Kirwan boys. There was a fair bit of banter going back and forth. A local school doing well on the big stage in the whole state is great for the region.