The scoreline indicates this was our worst game in over 2 years-but was it? I'm not going to make excuses-you can't after such a thrashing but here's a few little things that had a massive impact:
a) The pass from Kenny scooped up by Tupou who scores. At 16-4 on the back of the hit from Brown on Napa I thought we were starting to come back into the game. Everyone's head went down when that happened.
b) Very good set after we scored and on the back of that Will Smith kicks the ball dead. 7 tackle re-start from the 20 and penalty on the 2nd marches them 10 metres into our half and they kick a penalty goal in that set.
c) Pearce ball strip on Semi-blatant on the replay but he gets away with it. Bad field position and they score on the next set.
We were beaten on attitude/game plan yesterday-not size. Eg why did it take us to get to 14-0 before we (Brown) belted Napa. Brisbane don't have a big team but they more than hold their own. Bottom line is they came out with purpose and we didn't.
They smashed Norman and Guth yesterday every chance they got. I don't remember any big hits on Pearce or Keary.
Parra get 2-3 in the tackle (as do most teams) and then lay on the tackled player for some time thereafter. We did this yesterday but our tackles were ineffective and allowed them to offload time and time again which meant the next player had a one on one tackle and a quick play the ball and they scored on the back of this close to our line. We didn't allow offloads against N Qld which is why we defended our line so well.
Lastly one thing that wasn't exclusive to yesterday's game was how completely unorganised we are late in the tackle count. The amount of times Norman gets tackled on the 5th is unbelievable. To compound this, when he does get the ball on the 6th its gets to him far too slow (normally two off the play the ball) and the opposition is on him meaning the kick is rushed. I'm a big BA fan but that is a combination of poor coaching and poor set up from Norman. He needs to receive that ball straight from dummy half for his kick close to the line and there needs to be a big forward standing close to the ruck to slow down shooters at marker. This is basic stuff and we're not doing it well at all.
I still think highly of this team and BA but there is a stack of improvement that can be made by fixing up some of the little things.
Replies
34% possession rate killed us. Give us Roosters amount of possession and it would have been much different.
agree with that