Munster mystery sparks Origin dilemma; Gus\u2019 fingerprints on Dogs debacle<\/a><\/p>\nAnasta continued that the Bulldogs\u2019 signing of O\u2019Brien \u201cdoesn\u2019t look good\u201d and questioned why the club came to the decision to hire him given the Knights\u2019 poor form last year. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019d they come to this decision to employ Adam? He came from a struggling Knights side. Look at Newcastle now and look at the Bulldogs point of view,\u201d Anasta said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo disrespect to Adam but it doesn\u2019t look good. The optics aren\u2019t good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Journalist Dean Ritchie agreed, labelling it an \u201cunusual decision\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe optics aren\u2019t great. He was punted from the Knights so to go from a club who didn\u2019t want him to a club on the rise, seems a bit odd,\u201d Ritchie said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien replaced Jason Taylor as the club\u2019s attack coach, with Taylor taking up a position as the Bulldogs\u2019 NSW Cup coach.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs finished third last season, scoring 22.2 points per game and while their attack wasn\u2019t potent enough to do any damage in the finals, as Gorden Tallis pointed out, Taylor might have copped a harsh hand as he had to deal with several mid-season changes during the course of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cJason Taylor did a great job… He\u2019s got some great attacking ideas,\u201d Tallis said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that would frustrate me if I was a massive fan of the Dogs is I don\u2019t think it was broken last year. They just needed to add little pieces in but they pulled it all apart.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t like pointing fingers at guys but their attack (this season) has been atrocious.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knights parted ways with Adam O\u2019Brien at the end of the club\u2019s 2025 wooden spoon season.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Whether this was an O\u2019Brien decision or one from Ciraldo, the decision to move gun backrower Jacob Preston to the right side has also come under scrutiny.<\/p>\n
The injury to Viliame Kikau left a hole on the left edge, with the Bulldogs electing to move Preston to the left despite his strong right side combination with Lachlan Galvin.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreston moved to the left side from the right. He\u2019s obviously had that lethal combination with Galvin on the right. They\u2019ve shown that against Penrith over the past couple of seasons,\u201d Anasta said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey keep on moving their guns because of their halves and that\u2019s the elephant in the room,\u201d Tallis added, referencing the mixed form of Galvin and five-eighth Matt Burton.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs currently sit 12th on the ladder (three wins, five losses) with a crunch game against the Dolphins next on the docket on Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bulldogs\u2019 hire of former Knights mentor Adam O\u2019Brien to their coaching staff has come under question as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[83322,85,2652,29760,20174,93373,175248,2647,9499,5637,211909,32713,62753,211911,2648,111,2653,75636,139,69,2659,211910,205960,211908,48161,213,211906,211907,94286,211904,175223,211905],"class_list":["post-412169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adam-obrien","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-braith-anasta","tag-cameron-ciraldo","tag-coaching-staff","tag-dean-ritchie","tag-fox-league","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-gold-coast-titans","tag-gun-backrower","tag-jacob-preston","tag-justin-holbrook","tag-knights-coach","tag-new-south-wales","tag-new-zealand","tag-newcastle","tag-newcastle-knights","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oceania","tag-parted-ways","tag-right-side","tag-right-side-combination","tag-scott-gardiner","tag-sports","tag-staggering-stat","tag-unusual-decision","tag-wooden-spoon","tag-wooden-spoon-finish","tag-wooden-spoon-season","tag-worst-attack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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