PEOPLE can have their opinions on Kalyn Ponga's future, but it's his own personal business. It's not a distraction for us.
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People make it out to be a distraction, but I haven't seen it among the boys. There's nothing there.
Kalyn doesn't bring it into the change-room chat, or when we are having a coffee, we're not talking about that.
Obviously you see and hear people talking about it, but we respect him and he respects us. If it's bothering him, he will say something to us, or the coaches, and we know that. That's our relationship with him and if he thought it was bothering us, he would say something.
He has had a knee issue and for him, as the player he is, he needs that knee to do what he does - to be that crafty player.
It was a wet night against Manly last week as well.
I'm not making excuses for him, he is a talent - he just needs to play himself into some form and we need to help him.
It's not like it's under-8s, we can't just turn up and wait for him to win a game for us. We've got to do the right things to put him in good positions.
His future will get sorted. His people and Phil Gardner are looking after it, but obviously it's in the media and they've got a hold of it.
When we won the first two weeks, it wasn't an issue.
He has come back from injury and we've been losing, and that's when all this stuff starts happening.
I respect his decision and whatever he does, but I'd love him to stay.
He is one heck of a player and the club has done a lot for him, but he is obviously just trying to concentrate on his footy. His main focus is trying to get himself right and playing well for us.
It was a shocking night for footy last Thursday, really tough conditions in the wet.
Losing three blokes in the first half, including Kalyn, wasn't ideal. It stuffs your interchange up. But I was proud of guys like Kurt Mann who had to shift positions.
We had a disallowed try in that first half and Manly were hands on knees and had bad body language. It could have been so much different.
We've just got to hang in there. When we're hurting, the other team is usually hurting too. We've just got to have a better mentality, and can't make that many errors. Generally whoever holds the ball better in the wet wins, and that's what happened.
It's been tough watching teammates drop with injury over the past few weeks. I said the other day we need to get a witch-doctor to come in.
The last couple of years, we don't just get one injury at a time, we always get a few. We can't get any luck.
The boys have had a freshen up with a couple of days off. They got away with their families and came back Monday to prepare for the Dragons.
I joined them on Tuesday.
I know the Dragons are under the pump, but they will want to respond and we've got to go to Wollongong with a steely mindset.
Our start will be essential.
