I'm thankful for not getting to catch the game live last night. Watching the replay today, well at least the first 60 minutes, my take away is there's still hope for us. Reading through the game blog I was expecting the worse.
Key takeaways
Attack- although run metres were down, IMO we didn't struggle that badly in attack. We seemed to make reasonable metres with ball in hand but applied no pressure with terrible last tackle options. Brown tackled well, and ran well, but kicked poorly and threw some terrible passes. Effort was there and we're better with him in the side, but he's no playmaker. How would you be signing him for $13M to playmake. Dylan Walker seems a better fit until Moses is back, he keeps a cool head, push Brown to centre, at least in attack.
Defence - This is what lost us the game. All the damage came from Canberra taking advantage of no structure and communication, particularly around the ruck. We don't recover when there's a line break, so we need to stop handing them out so often.
For the first try Joe O blocks his own markers from making the tackle while getting back on side.
2nd try, just a good play, Canberra score from a kick behind the line. Longhi could have been positioned better.
3rd try, only three players chase the kick, the full back beats all three who came in too hot and aren't talking, then he beats three more sloppy tackles in open field. Eels defence is scattered with no structure and back peddling. Raiders go 100m in a set to score.
4th try, Canberra take advantage from dummy half with only a single marker and Hawkins the first line Defender on that side of the ruck. An Eels defender is on the ground. No talk again. It's still only 24-12 at this point.
5th try, 20 minutes left on the clock, Simmonson is at marker, and gets drawn in by some niggle. Completely side tracked while the dummy half takes the scoot. At this point it's 32-12, the game's a write off.
If Ryles can improve our ruck defence and has the Kahunas to move Brown away from 5/8 in attack, we'll at least win our share of games
Replies
The middles we struggled against a team who's attack is based around the middles. Guymer starting was a catastrophe, he should be dropped next week and Ryles, if he does not trust Smith for full 80, play Hands at 9.
Fair call, that made zero sense
Is that you Jim.
Not Jim.
MON?
No go have a look at how many errors we coughed up and where we made those errors.
When all Canberra did was complete sets and ran harder kicked long and waited for the above.There game plan wasn't flash at all.Ball security whod have thought fark me 5 hit ups nc kick we're better than the shit we brought to the table.
Its really all you have to realise if you complete high kick well chase hard your going to be in every game.
If you make errors cough up cheap ball like we have all season and preseason you get arseholed.I'll let you guess which side we are.
Onething I've noticed in every game we've never not once started a game on top ever.I don't know what JR and Nathan Brown are doing but they got to try something different.
Feels like the error count has dropped since the start of the season. Plenty of rookies, so it's to be expected early on. Half the errors last night were from senior players.
It doesn't matter who makes them the fact we are week 5 in to a season and there are no signals of any sought respite from them is the issue.Where we are coughing the ball up to is an issue also.
Get used to it we suck we get the spoon no if or buts
They made there bed now have to sleep in it
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