The wrestle & a rookie rake

[hellman]

Iosefa was horrible. If we release him now I wouldn't bat an eyelid. Politini is much better than him.

He looked good in patches however at the same time he did look real bad at other times.He took a lot of poor options and we could have lost that game based on some of his decisions.

I would get rid of him as well.

[tig_prmz]

We will need to win the ruck tomorrow night before anything else imo.
Melbournes line speed and wrestle, along with humble at dummy half could be a concern.

Who are the refs?

Their starting pack is still impressive, however their bench looks weak & green....the period before and after halftime could see the game won or lost....will be interesting to see if Sheens is consistent with the bench/front row

actually i'd say storm won the ruck, mostly coz of the wrestle. their defense didnt struggle one bit in the middle, we clearly won them on the fringes though. also, i wouldnt say the game was won won after halftime. what we really lacked was speed out side and maybe im judging him from the narrow 20m break, but sirro isnt as fast as i thought.

[Tigerdave]

Yeah I think the Storm won the wrestle, fortunately they didn't have the finesse in attack to do much else. Hate Melbourne and their general slowing down of the play the ball, but the conditions really didn't suit, although it didn't worry us against the Raiders.

[innsaneink]

We will need to win the ruck tomorrow night before anything else imo.
Melbournes line speed and wrestle, along with humble at dummy half could be a concern.

Who are the refs?

Their starting pack is still impressive, however their bench looks weak & green....the period before and after halftime could see the game won or lost....will be interesting to see if Sheens is consistent with the bench/front row

actually i'd say storm won the ruck, mostly coz of the wrestle. their defense didnt struggle one bit in the middle, we clearly won them on the fringes though. also, i wouldnt say the game was won won after halftime. what we really lacked was speed out side and maybe im judging him from the narrow 20m break, but sirro isnt as fast as i thought.

I wrote that on Thurs.
We sacrificed our line speed and held our line, adapted to the conditions and backed our defense. Had no idea it would be as wet and heavy as it was....good effort considering.

[tig_prmz]

i just feel like it was a very wierd game. we looked on top right from the outset but it was due to some individual brilliance (40/20) or their lack of communication in defense on the fringes.

however, they were on top in the middle. we didn't make any breaks through the middle, no quick PTB whereas manu and widdop were cutting right through us.

[innsaneink]

Yeh, we definitely ground out that win....good to win while not playing to our best

[tig_prmz]

haha 14 rounds gone, still not playing to our "best", im really lost as to what our best is

[innsaneink]

No one knows what the best is, players, coach, us...always room for improvement....we dipped last night, definitely down on the previous weeks display

[tig_prmz]

also, no one has mentioned bromwich, his footwork and strength was killing us as well. melbourne are the king of the ruck, but we really struggled there yesterday and tbh i've never seen us being good at that this year. last year though, we were very good at it, our PTB speed was killing the opposition. we got so many penalties because of that as well. we don't have speed in our outside backs this year either. we lack the patience to finish off tries. there is a lot of improvement needed. it feels like a sea-saw, where our forwards were criticised for being "soft" and halves for their kicking, now that that's going good, we are lacking the skill to finish off tries.

[GNR4LIFE]

Iosefa made some ordinary decisions late. Putting in an average kick on the 4th, then for god knows what reason kicking it 20 m sideways into touch on full time when it was only the third tackle

I'd rather him kick it out on fulltime than lose it and give the opposition a chance to score.

He could have run it backwards over the dead ball line if he wanted to....wouldn't have bothered me.

Did you see how far in-field he was? at least 20 m, and he puts a kick in along the ground. Anything could have happend, a rickashay or god knows what else. It would be safer in that situation to wrap the ball up because Melbourne would have just conceded. You don't kick a ball 20 m sideways along the ground, how is that the safer option???

[smeghead]

No one knows what the best is, players, coach, us...always room for improvement....we dipped last night, definitely down on the previous weeks display

True

Always a bonus to be down on performance and take the points.

[Flippedy]

No one knows what the best is, players, coach, us...always room for improvement....we dipped last night, definitely down on the previous weeks display

True

Always a bonus to be down on performance and take the points.

We may have been down somewhat on the previous week, but we can really only play as well as the opposition lets us - Canberra were non-existent in defence, Melb were very tough.