The first half today highlights that ball possession is king. The reason why we lost and struggled between rounds 3 to 6 was because we had less then 50% ball and completed below 80%.
Well, today we only had 36% ball in the first half, completing 5 sets from 8, whereas the Roosters completed a massive 20 sets from 21 sets (95%.) Of the 5 sets we had we scored 1 try, which is pretty good.
It will be a massive second half for us to win and we would probably need to complete a 100% and have around 22-24 sets.
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Full time:
Roosters - completed 35 sets; Parra completed 17 sets (the Roosters had double the ball).
Roosters - ran for 1749 metres; Parra ran for 1064 (the Roosters ran 685 more metres).
Roosters - made 251 tackles; Parra made 343 tackles (Parra did 92 more tackles).
Roosters - kicked 446 metres; Parra kicked 363 metres (Parra had 83 less metres from their kicks).
Roosters - had 68% ball possession; Parra had 39% ball possession.
Effort, enthusiasm, coaching and attitude had absolutely nothing to do with tonight's loss. We lost because we had little ball, our kicks were not great and we had to make a lot more tackles. In short our tank was drained and when we had the ball we were very tired.
In summary, Possession is King!!!!!
We need the stable strong smarts of Cooper Cronk for one or two seasons to lead our squad between the ears. We don't have such a player on our books. Bring Cronk to lead Norman, Gutho, Moses and co for one or two seasons and let them learn everything from Cronk before he retires. And we need to keep Semi. Roosters have big, fast, strong athletic wingers, centres and forwards and a spine full of gutsy strong pocket battleships. We are not far off but we are not yet in the same class. We still need to buy two big powerful mobile props and one winger and center emulating something similar to what the Roosters currently have in their outside backs and we have the cap space and lots of 2017 off contract players to make all this happen. We need a real tough smart and classy general. We currently do not have one.
Cronk is a player that will make your team a top 4 team and Grand Final quality. But for his age he should have been our priority.