At the Risk of going all Robert Lloyd, here are the facts.
The crap parts
1. We were rubbish for 60 minutes. Thank God the Tigers drop off mentally more than we do.
2. We snuck over the line against team 15
3. Those 4 forward passes without any pressure are a real worry.
4. Our forwards got shown up for 60 mins against a pretty avg pack.
5. Normans Kicking game.........crap on a cracker that was poor.
The pretty good parts
1. Gutho filled in at FB quite well. Showing his worth as a utility back.
2. Brown was a powerhouse again. Best forward this year by a mile.
3. I think subbing off Keysar due to injury showed how he should be played. He had more energy/impact in the back end.
The part that leaves me scratching my head
We're really terrible for 55-60min then turn on a master class of forward power and aggression for the final 20 mins.
It begs the question. Why were the forwards having zero impact early on then turn it up. I can only suspect it was a Tigers drop off.
Can't fault the effort but our execution was so bad. At 22-14 It would have been a shut out against a top 8 team.
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Also liked Taka straightening up and stepping back into the line. Created plenty of chances in the 2nd half doing that.
For sure. So leaky. To me to it wreaks of unfitness.
So true mate....
I can't recall seeing worse ruck defense than what I witnessed yesterday. Half the time we didn't even have a friggin' marker!!!!
mind boggling wasn't it.
Ain't that the truth. Every time we cocked it up the tigers replied in kind. A half decent team would have belted us. Mind you at least we didn't chuck the town in like circa 2011-2013.
For the first 10-15 minutes we were the better team. Our line speed was good and we made easy metres. Then we went to sleep. BA though is well aware of those issues. He was clear that performance wasn't acceptable even if it did result in two points.
To be fair, I had the Sports Ears on and the refs were pointing out that the Tigers players kept trying to milk penalties in the ruck and even though our markers weren't square they were calling them onside. At one point Aaron Woods went up to complain and surprisingly Ben Cummins told him to stop trying to milk the penalties because if he kept doing it they would keep calling the markers onside.