1 - Defeat Titans 32-28. We were lucky to win this one, We were at home, we had a big penalty count in our favour and our defence was poor.. Also the Titans are rubbish.
2 - Beaten by Sharks at Shark park 18-16. We were only in this game ytowards the end but lost in the last minute. TBH we were not the better team on the day, their forwards owned us.
3. Beat Storm 28-24 oin Melbourne - a great win. You have to play well to beat the Storm at home.
4. Beat Dragons 48-14 at home. We did what was expected and did it well.
5. Beat the Titans 28-20 at home. We won but not that impressive although Titans turned up to play and the refs after being criticised seemed to want to try and help the Titans.
6. Lost to the Tigers 21-20 at home. Lost to the then winless Tigers. We did not turn up and looked poor.
7. Beat the Knights at Newcastle 39-2. Looked good at the time but in really it is just what everyone is doing to the Knights this year.
8. Smashed by Cowboys 35-4 at Darwin. Cowboys showed what a well-coached team looks like. Payten might have had a tough year last year when he called out JT but look at them now. He has done more there in 1 year with that team and bringing through young players than we have seen in a looong time.
9. Beat the Panthers at Penrith 22-20. Again great win beating Panthers at home even it was just by a goal kick.
10. Beaten by Roosters 31-24. I think the scoreline flatters us we never looked like winning this one at anytime.
11. We beat Manly at home 22-20. I think we were lucky Turbo Tom got injured in this game.
12. We beat Raiders 28-20. I thought this was a good result. The Raiders were in form and we beat them at home.
13. The bye
14. The day of shame. Flogged by the last placed Bulldogs.
So the season so far.
We beat the titans twice but neither time convincingly.
We had easy wins over the Dragons and Knights as any top 4 team would.
We scraped home against Manly when Tom got injured.
We had a good win over the Raiders at home.
We had great wins against the Storm and Panthers although both matches were very close.
The Sharks and Roosters beat us in the middle and we never really looked the better team at any stage even though the scores were close.
We lost a close one to the Tigers but honestly it was the then winless Tigers.
We got flogged by the Cowboys and now the Bulldogs.
Looking at this I would say there are 5 games out of 13 where we played how a top 4 team should. As for the rest, we were well below where we should be to be considered a premiership threat. The next 2 weeks will be interesting against the Roosters (who traditionally owned us in the imddle) and the Rabbitohs (who traditionally pull us apart out wide.) We play them both through the origin period and Keary might be out with a head injury so maybe we will get lucky.
And that;s the sad part, looking at our season so far, we need to be lucky. We just don't turn up often enough.
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An accurate and well balanced ( i.e. even sided - not unfairly distorting the truth of our overall efforts ) M-B . Hoping that as we are getting into the back end of the season
and all with players available we can be consistent otherwise facing a few dropping to reserves .
That's a very fair assessment. The Storm and Panthers games whilst good achievements have merely papered over the cracks. Overall we've been very scratchy. Yesterday was a season ending disaster. This side is fundamentally flawed and lack of on field leadership is obvious. You can't train that. If we don't have quality leadership then we just don't have it. Major changes are needed to get what we need.
Good post, Mannah. A fair review.
We just destroyed everything gained from the Panthers, Storm & Raiders brutally fought wins in 80mins yesterday.
Premiers have never in history been flogged by the team coming last at this point of the season, as HOE has shown us with brilliant stats around this.
Not to sound like a defeatist, but really dont think it matters too much what we do against the Roosters or Rabbits. Our season was on a knifes edge already, any hope we had went down in flames yesterday.
Hope to be very wrong, but dont feel luck, BA or any of these players are capable of saving 2022 from here. We might be better served now planning for the future & change.
We're not a top four team and won't be a top four team top eight is looking like a bridge to far. I don't normally make predictions but this is painfully obvious.
I think we will be scraping in, 7th or 8th. With a roster like this that is not good enough, considering the players leaving with this being our last go at the window and all these players pledging to win a title before they go.
5th or 6th would have been disappointing but 7th or 8th is worse, i know Wests fans would kill for an 8th placed finish but for us we need to strive higher.
It's not season over yet. The dogs have already beaten the cowboys and roosters this year it's not like that can't play at all. What did they spend to assemble a half decent roster this year? Yes they've been mostly shit but as we have seen this year teams always get up to play us. Unfortunately we don't handle that fact like a Storm or a Panthers but it's still fact. We won't play an easy game all year. We were awful and clearly rattled after 20 mins but just about everything the dogs touched turned to gold.
If we can bounce back then we can still overcome this.
No doubt we will bounce back. Likely play finals, maybe even win a few finals games but to take it all the way we'd need to go on some sort of Tigers '05 run. Because almost always, the best teams all year win the comp, not some lower 8 side who manages to put 4-5 wins together at the right time.
This season thats no guarantee, look at the draw matches against the Roosters, south, Broncos, Panther's and Storm I feel we are at the start of a midseason slump and missing the finals is a real possibility - with a terrible for and against we haven't banked enough wins especially against the bottom teams.
It's not at that stage yet. If we can get some wins now we can actually move into a position where we are genuine challengers. Look it could go either way from here I agree but I'm just holding a little hope.
I was at the game yesterday, I actually woke up thinking the game was at Parra stadium but when a mate picked me up and started heading towards Homebush I was taken by surprise. I immediately thought hang on we may not win this. The atmosphere at that stadium whatever they call it these days is non existent. There were next to no eels fans there that I could see. It just felt wrong. Then that disallowed try. Worst possible thing that can happen I reckon to get a pretty easy early try disallowed. It just seemed like it was going to be the dogs day.
the whole experience reminded me of 1998 somehow. Probably didn't help that Darryl Halligan was in proximity and gave a speech in the box I was in
Please dont mention 1998 ME I was at that game and the memory haunts me till today lol
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