As hard as it was to watch a replay it did reveal how much we were dominated in the forwards. A review of the stats supports this:
Penrith forward run meters:
Fisher Harris-201m
Yeo-186m
Martin-155m
Our best was Matterson who played 62mins and ran for 136m
Post contact metres-Pen-736m, Par-521.
Watching it 2nd time around it was very clear their big men had a plan straight to run at Reed who made 56 tackles. Virtually all of these tackles had them on the front foot and it was very rare that we actually pushed them back or held ground. On the back of that was quick play the balls which gave Cleary as much time as he wanted in attack.
Conversely in defence they drove us back and had us on the back foot from the get go. Starting Kenny at hooker was a huge part of this plan as he came up with a number of big hits in that first 20.
Not saying the loss is on Reed. The fact he made 56 tackles is incredible but where were the big bodies in support? If they weren't making tackles they should have had plenty left for hit-ups but were beaten badly in that area as well.
I can't see Dogs playing Reed for 80 minutes-he's just not big enough. Other clubs adapted accordingly to ensure their hookers didn't make 50+ grandmother tackles-eg Canberra-Woolford/Starling, Rooters-Verrills/Watson, Melb-Grant/Smith and so on.
Next year when Hodgson comes we are going to have to have a second hooker on the bench-which won't be a bad thing. Hodgson will fatigue a whole lot quicker than Mahoney and will not be an 80 min player-particularly coming back from major surgery. The question is, who will be our bench hooker?
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Would be great if Hands could step up.as he has great utility. Rein will be here for another year so may be the front runner.
I think that was the plan with Stone but we lost him early this season.
Panthers forwards definitely dominated, part of the reson could be they were fresher. They played less games in the finals, plus our coach played our big men massive minutes leading into the GF.
To'o ran for more first half metres than our fowards combined. It wasn't just their fowards that dominated, their outside backs help out when needed. Despite Sivo's size he is lazy and doesn't help out our fowards enough. When we had Fergo and Sivo making metres for us in previous years it kept the fowards fresh but Sivo doesn't have same impact he had previously and Blake although he tries isn't as good as Fergo was.
Legs tackles bring a player straight to the ground and they can get up faster. The Gold standard these days is holding the player in the tackle and then putting them on their back, which takes the longest time to stand up and play the ball.
I didn't notice the targeting of Mahoney but he is a great legs tackler who is not big relatively speaking.
our line speed contributed towards the large meters gained by the forwards