Newcastle blew us off the park in the first quarter to be ahead 20-0. Dejuva of the 2001 grand final where Johns, Tahu, Kennedy ran rampage in the first quarter.
The Knight's second-rower Fitzibbon admitted post match in the dressing room that their game plan was simple: "Run hard. Tackle hard". To play with desire. And that's what they did. Not unlike the Raiders uptempo, in your face game, where they ahut us down 19-0 a few weeks ago.
Yes, the Knights played with more desire than us. But also they played smarter. Their spine Levi, Pearce and Ponga outsmarted our defence with a simple formula.
They busted us though the middle with too much speed and military precision.
Our completion rate, attack and kicking game wasn't up to last week's high standards, and some peculiar refereeing decisions went against us, but it was our defensive inadequacies around the ruck that ultimately lost us this match.
All their 4 tries were through the middle, and 3 of them, were scored taking advantage of the gap between Mahoney and either Junior or Terepo.
7th min - Levi scoots through the a gap between Mahoney and Peni, with Junior's back turned oblivious to Levi's bust in the middle (until he ran beside Junior passing him). Ponga supported for a try despite Moses and Sivo chasing. 8-0.
10th - Pearce is about to put a grubber through the middle near the posts. 14-0.
26th - Gavet barges over between Mahoney and Junior. Again. 20-0.
We fought back to be within reach at 20-14, and our completion rate improved as did possession through a few good tries to Mau and Sivo. And Salmon, Lane, Fergo, Jennings, Sivo on the left edge almost snatched the game from the jaws of defeat, busting them a few times.
But again, 10 minutes from full time, the Knights busted us through the middle to seal the match.
68th - Pearce strikes again, on the line, slicing through between Mahoney and Junior to seal the match, to make it 28-14.
There it was again. The ruck space around Mahoney. Part of the problem is Mahoney made 69 tackles. That's a ridiculous workload.
If there's any criticism of our leaders and coach, it was a failure to adapt when our weakness was exposed. We just kept doing the same.
In last week's 51-6 win and throughout portions of 2019 we've shown we have attacking ability. And can score pretty.
That we didn't give up when we were down at 20-0 shows we have some back bone.
But we are not going to win many matches letting in 28 points every week. We need to do the ugly boring stuff. Defence, attitude and desire, wins matches. So does dominating the ruck and focusing for 80 minutes.
And if we are to move beyond the Jeckyl and Hyde performances, and become a tough semi-finals bound team, we really need to get that in order.
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They kept busting us up the middle because if we spent more than 0.5 seconds in the ruck defending it resulted in a penalty. Three blown in the first 5-10 and you just can’t stop a fresh team that you aren’t being allowed to slow down a bit without being penalised.
When we had the ball a blind eye was suddenly turned on the ruck and the ten meter line.
We weren’t meant to win that one. Bookies would have cleaned up!!
Well Ross at very least we were not to be leading at half time that’s for sure, I wonder what that was paying...
Hoe good analysis I wonder how this has looked in previous games, I didn’t notice this so much I just couldn’t believe how many times we had no markers in that first half, we lost the ruck badly and due to know markers that stretched the defensive line which created the gap between 9 and 10. Young Mahoney will learn to make the tackle in future when he was called offside and I don’t know what Terepo was doing with that first try. Fergo and guth took a punt with that kick, last week they all paid off this week the bastard ball just wouldn’t go out.
Xman, thanks. 69 tackles to Reed. That's a ridiculous workload. Even Hindy might blush.
Mahoney - 69 tackles. missed 5. 80 mins.
Junior - 19 tackles, missed 5. 43 mins.
And for whatever reason when Junior came back on we persisted with them. And surely enough Pearce seiezed the opportunity to seal the game and snuff out any hope.
We just gotta learn from this. And be smarter.
I think the refs did exactly what they should do. The knights were running harder and winning the ruck, so the advantage should go to them. Rewards effort and commitment.
Magpie, good point. Refereeing ended with penalties square 8-8 and weren't the reason we lost.
But I'd say went Knights way when it mattered most. Such as the touch-and-go Gutho forward pass ruling denying Sivo a try, was a big call, and 4-0 when Knights streaked 20-0 ahead in first quarter.
Raiders game also had a few dodgy forward pass rulings against us that is starting to cost us points. And points matter.
They just played faster than us in that first 20 minutes, everything they did was just faster. There were definitely lessons to be learnt from that first first 20 minutes, BUT, then we did the hard part, slowing and then turning around the momentum.
The hardest thing to do in the NRL is stop a team when it has all the momentum, particularly on the road. The fact that we were able to do that, despite not getting the result, and not having to get a rocket from the coach to do it is massive IMO. We're showing that we are becoming that kind of team, the team that is able to adjust on the fly, go set for set, get back into the wrestle and work our way back into a game rather than just try to play our way out of trouble. That is the kind of mentality that Melbourne have in spades and it takes years to develop that.
The more I think about it, the more upbeat I am about how we are traveling as a club. We didn't get the win, but we've shown we can play from behind now.
Great point Brett. I agree. Momentum is key. And we're showing fight. Just lacking smarts at time.
The fact that we came back to within 20-14, to stop the heavy wheels of momentum, from 20-0, is very telling. Just disaappointed we really didn't address the weakness at any point.
And shit. We made almost 400 tackles. Mahoney made a ridicukous 69 tackles. Still can't believe that's not a typo.
Next game is going to tell us even more. Big game.
Marker defence was atrocious, we had markers on several occasions running bak into the line with their backs to the attack. At other times markers both pointed in the same direction went there and left great holes. Maybe that was due to the speed of the play the ball Im unsure. Pearce was offside and penalised on numerous occasions but no sign of a sinbinning, lessons to learn I guess.
Hi Bear, Yeah our marker defence leaked all the points except for one grubber kick. Let's hope we address this. Now.
Hell On Wheels: When I started high school we had a Social Studies teacher who taught us nothing about Social Studies but was a Rugby League freak. He would at any moment point his finger or cane at me and others and shout: What DO YOU DO? Before one could answer he would shout: YOU RUN HARD, YOU RUN STRAIGHT AND YOU TACKLE LOW! The so-called game plan of the Knights was remarkably similar to that. You know, it's not f.....g rocket science.
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