LA Badlands Wire wrote:such a debatable subject ! you could easily say the sky coverage showed Penny to be at fault with 2 of the tries one he was out of position came back from the sticks side of king and was therefore too late to impact gardner into touch, another you could say in attempting a one on one tackle you should always clamp the ball thus preventing the offload , Penny clearly had both arms round Gardners waist. Those that support or Choose to critisice are equally entitled to that opinion.
Penny burst onto the scene During an injury crisis and Gave his all,
he was refrshing, exciting, Passionate, and exactly what was needed at the time. Since then we have only really seen Glimpses of what he is capable of and more regularly seen what at present he is not good at.
Nobody can say he isn,t working hard to improve, that he isnt on a learning curve, its can we afford for him to be educated in first team games? As someone else stated earlier on this thread he seems somewhat
behind Riley in his development, this is due to the fact he had no developmnt in the amateur game from say the age of 8 learning the basic skills under the coaching of some excellent deadicated junior coaches
in the Town, then at scholarship level. Penny is an athlete that has become a Rugby league Player, Riley is a Rugby league Player.
Some of you more experienced posters on here really do need to have a good look at yourselves and the way you often berate those that have a different opinion, have you ever wondered why there doesnt seem to be many new posters appearing and when they do they often dont stay for long, perhaps thos great withe the statistics can tellme how many NEW posters we have welcomed in2009.

JWP wrote:To be honest, I think the Penny debate could run until page 400 and we'd solve nothing. As speccies, we seem to have split into two groups where he is concerned, and I think it's that devisive to be honest, one camp are watching his performances and looking for mistakes, the others watching and looing for improvements in his game, and to if you like 'understand why things are happening' say. Last night, I thought Kings position was woeful, I thought Penny was stuck in the old 'rock & hard place' situation, and I bet if we watched the footage together, every error that you'd ping Penny for, I'd give you a reason for why I believed the error was attributed to King.

I've no problem with split opinion, what irritates me is when folk are so matter of fact about things on here, in this instance about Penny, you end up with statements like "We all know that his positioning is terrible, his running the ball out is awful, and his tackling, well ....". It's a far, far more complex debate than that, with many factors to throw into the mix, and no doubt we're missing some.

The way I see it, if the King/Penny partnership isn't working, which there's a feeling it isn't, folk seem inclined to pass Penny 80% of the blame for this, and 20% to King, and this is wrong. At worst it's 50/50. I think at times, his lack of physicality makes him easy pickings for folk to just make sweeping statemenst about him like 'he can't tackle' without looking at the progress he's made.

Rob Wire wrote:The Ade Gardner dissallowed try, Penny was too close to Matt King which created the space for Gardner to score but fortunatley for us a fraction of his foot clipped the line, if Penny had been positioned better Gardner would have had no chance of crossing as the option and space wouldn`t have been their for saints to attack.

Saints 2nd try scored by Ade Gardner, Penny ran in field to try and tackle Leon Pryce then all of a sudden he stopped and back tracked but by then it was too late as he had left his wing and that created the space for Gardner to score. Matt King was poorly positioned as well but we all know he is a defensive liability, if Penny thinks that their is too much of a gap in the defence then its his job to shout and wave players across, he shouldn`t have charged off his wing and come as far in field as he did.

Our left side is a defensice liability as well as being a virtually non existent attacking threat, Matt King is shocking but Penny is just as bad as and he can`t hide behind the rookie tag forever as he is racking up some first team games now and to me he doesn`t seem to be learning a great deal. Its a worrying combination that we have on our left.

NCB wrote:
As for Penny I can't make my mind up. I hold my breath in excitement when he gets a bit of space - its great to see a winger with such pace. Equally I hold my breath when the opposition fling the ball to his wing, but not quite in the same way.

The key problem is that whilst the kid is learning and improving we are dithering around and ending up exposed. If you want to be a serious contender for silverware this is unacceptable. I like him, I like his passion but I think I would rather he did his learning elsewhere for a while. For his sake and ours.

LA Badlands Wire wrote: Penny burst onto the scene During an injury crisis and Gave his all,
he was refrshing, exciting, Passionate, and exactly what was needed at the time. Since then we have only really seen Glimpses of what he is capable of and more regularly seen what at present he is not good at.
Nobody can say he isn,t working hard to improve, that he isnt on a learning curve, its can we afford for him to be educated in first team games?

Foz wrote:Has it occured to anyone that the last few games of last season Kevin Penny's defence was tough and well executed. There's a difference in the team now. The difference being Louis Anderson.