Smithy answers YOUR questions

[supermario]

smithy don't seem to be answering many questions....... just saying

[Geohood]

Dear Brian,
The performance of the team in recent times in wet conditions has been very disappointing. Particularly we seem incapable of adapting to wet conditions whereas other teams seem more willing and disciplined to play smart, tight and mistake free football. What confidence can we as fans take that the team will address and rectify these problems sooner rather than later?

- Chris, Sheridan and Marnie

Brian Smith: HI guys I appreciate your question and glad you are still on board with us. Wet games have been a problem for us no doubt. Some of that has been about our attacking style of play and we are addressing that. Like you I would love us to fix that ASAP but the reality is it takes time to get teams to develop the maturity through experience of how to deal with all the things footy tosses up in the pressure of NRL games.

Like more Roosters fans than ever before (our exploding Membership) and given our finish to last year, I was very enthusiastic about 2011, but is the slow start to this year a reason for concern? Or do you purposely start the team off slow and build for the latter part of the year?
- Mark Jones

Brian Smith: G'day Mark good to hear from you mate. I want to win every game and set out to do that. But I also know the teams that improve most do best almost every season. We will improve just as we did in 2010.

What does Lama Tasi and Steve Naughton have to do to make the squad? Are you keeping an eye on them?
- Kurt

Brian Smith: Hey Kurt , appreciate your interest in our players mate. Lama needs to develop many aspects of his play to reach his potential- which is very high. He is doing well at the Jets and improving his match fitness and game awareness. He is very "green" at present. We do LOVE him he is a great young man. Naughto has been doing excellently at the Jets after a horror season with illness and injury in 2010. He is a really msart player and he is knocking on the door. His physical stature is improving also to give him the tools for NRL success.

G’day Smithy,
First of all congratulations for getting the team to the GF last year, great effort. My Question is: What can be done about the amount of possession we lose because of basic errors i.e sloppy ball playing for one. Can you bring in a fine system? For the amount of money these blokes earn they should be able to play and catch a ball, its basic footy. If one of my kids did it they would be taken off and drilled the next training session.
- Croucher

Brian Smith: Hey Croucher,

Thanks for your comment mate I appreciate your time and know your a big fan and regular social media contributor so thanks. In regards to your question when we review every game we do take errors in to account. The comparisons you make about how much money players are paid is not balanced with how much pressure and fatigue NRL players face.

We have a slightly different take on what errors really are. Losing posession is never good but not accepting opportunities to create breaks and tries is sometimes worse. We never highlight errors to the point where we make players start to second guess themselves about creative play.

[Guest]

Fark I thought the Telegraph's blogs were slow.

[Geohood]

That's all.. the last few questions are random.

[Rooster_6]

I think he nailed it on the head with Naughton, very smart player surely wont be far from FG.

Interesting that he isn't really worried by our errors, I'm not as convinced as him that they're all down to trying to make linebreaks or advance the play. Some of them are really basic errors which we weren't making last year.

[Guest]

The problem with basic errors is that they are just that, basic.

What are you gonna do? Stop the video of a guy knocking on the ball and replay it 25 times and say "DON'T DROP THE BALL".

Go out and drill it 4,000 times and have it done perfect every time then blow your stack when they do it in game again?

That's why they are called coach killers.

I'm sure they pay some attention to very poor decision making turnovers as opposed to straight basic errors but I can live with the answer that he wants them to be aggressive and attempt to put up points.

[Guest]

What about the dis in the answer to the first question? lol

[Guest]

Was there a real question in there though or just a person unleashing on him?

Seemed like they were all pretty much rhetorical from the way they were asked.

Where is your spirit?

Did she really just ask an NRL coach a metaphysical question?

[Guest]

i wonder if anyone asked smith about the players laughing after a loss.. and if so... we're those questions filtered out

[Guest]

i wonder if anyone asked smith about the players laughing after a loss.. and if so... we're those questions filtered out

Stephen Alexander was filtering the questions from the Piano Room, while the boys were bagging up for tonight's trade