100% Footy<\/a>. <\/p>\n\u201cThe mentality of some moron that wants to hide behind a pole and take a photo of you to send it to the papers, what do they get out of that? Who cares, honestly.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway, I had a lot of meetings on the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
It comes as veteran journalist Brent Read revealed on NRL360 the Bulldogs are trying to recruit a new fullback and believes the fact Gould is meeting with potential hooker and fullback recruits shows they \u201cgot it wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell you right now they\u2019re looking around for a fullback,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mere fact they are in the market for those positions shows they know they made some mistakes and need to fix them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gould confirmed as much on Monday night, stating they are looking to bring in reinforcements as they struggle to recapture the form that saw them play finals footy last year.<\/p>\n
But the 68-year-old is confident that the issues are being addressed, having broken his silence on what is going wrong at the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt they\u2019re struggling, but I\u2019ve seen all this before. There are a number of reasons why we\u2019re struggling at the moment, and there\u2019s not much we can do about it. We\u2019ve got to just keep turning up and giving it our best shot,\u201d Gould continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe disappointing thing the other night was the start, we were down 24-0 after 20 minutes, and we actually won the next hour. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re fighting on, but we have that bad 20-minute period every week, and it\u2019s costing them games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a number of factors why we\u2019ve gone the way we have over the past five weeks, but we\u2019re not whinging about it, and we\u2019re not looking for excuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to get some better form back on the field \u2013 it belies the way they train and prepare \u2013 we\u2019ve just got to get some wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
But former Canterbury star Braith Anasta believes that is easier said than done, as they couldn\u2019t even get up for Stephen Crichton\u2019s milestone game last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched the tribute to Critta on Instagram, and it was beautiful,\u201d Anasta said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anyone deserved their team to get behind them and win a milestone game it was him and then you look at the performance and you think, \u2018What is wrong?\u2019 \u2026 we commended them 12 to 18 months ago about how they had changed the DNA and it was the Bulldogs of old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was with players like Sexton and Mahoney, it wasn\u2019t this crazy star-studded team. They just found their mojo and DNA and what it is to be a Bulldog and here we are after numerous decisions and they look nothing like a Bulldogs team.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point of the season last year, the Bulldogs were top of the NRL ladder, before several personnel changes were made, and their season quickly went backwards.<\/p>\n
The Dogs changed their hooker and halfback midway through last season and already are seemingly ready to change both positions again, speaking to hooker Verrills, and halfback Luke Metcalf.<\/p>\n
However, they ultimately were forced to pull out of the race for the latter due to his high wage demands.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs have won just three of ten matches as they sit in the bottom four on the ladder.<\/p>\n
Phil Gould slams \u2018unbalanced\u2019 NSW squad<\/p>\n
Gould also voiced his displeasure with the structure of the NSW squad ahead of State of Origin 1. <\/p>\n
Laurie Daley announced a total of eight changes to his starting 13 that ran out in Game 3 last year, handing out seven debuts.<\/p>\n
But Gould doesn\u2019t like what he sees, feeling Billy Slater got Queesland\u2019s squad right and Laurie Daley got it wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at the NSW squad I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anywhere near as balanced as the Queensland squad and I don\u2019t think it covers as many things that could go wrong on the night potentially,\u201d Gould said on 100% Footy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf something happened to James Tesedsco, you\u2019ve virtually got an inexperienced fullback going back there to cover that position. Let\u2019s hope it doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other thing is coverage in the back row. I guess Cameron Murray or a Victor Radley might be able to cover an edge and they have done at a club level, but not in Origin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former Blues coach also feels if NSW has less possession than Queensland they simply won\u2019t win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look at this team and I\u2019m thinking they\u2019re going to have to have a lot of possession. They\u2019re going to have to at least get 50% possession to win this game,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think this is a team that can survive without the ball for long periods of time, which could happen in Origin. It can happen with if they referee the way they\u2019ve been doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, in Origin we used to talk about you got to win without the ball. You know, whether you come home with 30% possession or 60% doesn\u2019t matter. You still got to win without it. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think this team can win without it. They\u2019re going to need a lot of possession to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally published as Phil Gould erupts at \u2018moron\u2019 as photo with Titans hooker Sam Verrills goes viral<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bulldogs supremo Phil Gould has blasted the \u2018moron\u2019 who snapped him meeting Titans rake Sam Verrills as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-681165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}