Defence

[fergiefurr]

I know we've conceded 28 and 22, however to me our defence has improved significantly.

Over the years teams would easily and regularly make 60/70ms a set against us. That hasn't happened so far this year. The tries we are conceding are after teams are being marched downfield due to penalties/ill discipline.

We are muscling up in the ruck and to me it's very noticeable.

 

[happy_tiger]

Far too many arm grabs still , I think they cost us three tries tonight

Still think we lack concentration too often and fail to close plays down and then don't react fast enough

The other issue I had was the way we were bunched up in the last 10 minutes behind the play the ball

You just let sides compress their line and crush ball runners doing that , you still need some shape when you are trying to close out a game

 

[Eddie]

It looks stronger in terms of first up contact and not conceeding offloads.

It has also improved in terms of territory not conceeding cheap 10 and 12 metre charges.

However we still give up some really soft tries and line breaks.

In both games we have looked in quick sand at certain points.

Needs to improve to trouble the heavyweights.

 

[greatodensraven]

Still plenty of work to do in defence. At times we had no line-speed & a couple of their tries (ie. walker & lawrence) were really soft.

We've shown some real fight to come back against the momentum in both games but can really be our own worst enemy at times. Gotta get the D right to be a genuine contender.

 

[tigerap]

It's still the 10min either side of half time that's killing us

 

[stevetiger]

We are muscling up in the ruck and trying to hit it up hard and defend with some hard hits but there are still some misses out there. Is it just some players going to sleep or being tired or just getting beat ?

 

[foreveratiger]

Far too many arm grabs still , I think they cost us three tries tonight

Still think we lack concentration too often and fail to close plays down and then don't react fast enough

The other issue I had was the way we were bunched up in the last 10 minutes behind the play the ball

You just let sides compress their line and crush ball runners doing that , you still need some shape when you are trying to close out a game

I agree with what your saying happy but to be fair Cabonara was pounding us with penalties and having to defend at least every 5 minutes 2 set of sixers.
Loosing Siro within the 1st 10 minutes changed our rotation and costing us an interchange early in the game.

We guts it out and when they came at 16-16 I didn't think we would go up a gear and close that game out.
The energy and hunger was there, we are only going to get better.
We have a spine that is a Melbourne Storm in the making and players are going to be attracted to come here in the near future.
Good morning Taupau :mrgreen:

 

[stevetiger]

Far too many arm grabs still , I think they cost us three tries tonight

Still think we lack concentration too often and fail to close plays down and then don't react fast enough

The other issue I had was the way we were bunched up in the last 10 minutes behind the play the ball

You just let sides compress their line and crush ball runners doing that , you still need some shape when you are trying to close out a game

I agree with what your saying happy but to be fair Cabonara was pounding us with penalties and having to defend at least every 5 minutes 2 set of sixers.
Loosing Siro within the 1st 10 minutes changed our rotation and costing us an interchange early in the game.

We guts it out and when they came at 16-16 I didn't think we would go up a gear and close that game out.
The energy and hunger was there, we are only going to get better.
We have a spine that is a Melbourne Storm in the making and players are going to be attracted to come here in the near future.
Good morning Taupau :mrgreen:

Here is the thing that I think some people don't get. Sometimes you miss tackles because of getting smashed from the ref, players getting tired or someone like Taupau runs at you.

I think it's more about players just missing tackles and they have to work on their technique or speed defensively.

 

[happy_tiger]

Far too many arm grabs still , I think they cost us three tries tonight

Still think we lack concentration too often and fail to close plays down and then don't react fast enough

The other issue I had was the way we were bunched up in the last 10 minutes behind the play the ball

You just let sides compress their line and crush ball runners doing that , you still need some shape when you are trying to close out a game

I agree with what your saying happy but to be fair Cabonara was pounding us with penalties and having to defend at least every 5 minutes 2 set of sixers.
Loosing Siro within the 1st 10 minutes changed our rotation and costing us an interchange early in the game.

We guts it out and when they came at 16-16 I didn't think we would go up a gear and close that game out.
The energy and hunger was there, we are only going to get better.
We have a spine that is a Melbourne Storm in the making and players are going to be attracted to come here in the near future.
Good morning Taupau :mrgreen:

We gave many of those penalties away on purpose FT , if you do that you have to be prepared to defend them

I didn't really have an issue with any penalties bar the one on Tedesco in the 2nd half , both players were entangled and the Manly player tried to get up too quickly

 

[jirskyr]

I think the primary negative as tigerap said is the period either side of half-time. Also there is a drop in defensive execution at the 60-70 minute mark. The latter however I am seeing from many sides and probably a reflection of the reduced interchange.

We struggled to control Manly's ruck speed last night and there were some crucial missed tackles that resulted in gift tries. But the on-line and scrambling defence was quite good.

 

[foreveratiger]

Far too many arm grabs still , I think they cost us three tries tonight

Still think we lack concentration too often and fail to close plays down and then don't react fast enough

The other issue I had was the way we were bunched up in the last 10 minutes behind the play the ball

You just let sides compress their line and crush ball runners doing that , you still need some shape when you are trying to close out a game

I agree with what your saying happy but to be fair Cabonara was pounding us with penalties and having to defend at least every 5 minutes 2 set of sixers.
Loosing Siro within the 1st 10 minutes changed our rotation and costing us an interchange early in the game.

We guts it out and when they came at 16-16 I didn't think we would go up a gear and close that game out.
The energy and hunger was there, we are only going to get better.
We have a spine that is a Melbourne Storm in the making and players are going to be attracted to come here in the near future.
Good morning Taupau :mrgreen:

We gave many of those penalties away on purpose FT , if you do that you have to be prepared to defend them

I didn't really have an issue with any penalties bar the one on Tedesco in the 2nd half , both players were entangled and the Manly player tried to get up too quickly

The thing was when we tried to slow down Manly in the play the balls? We got nailed from Cabonara but a few times in the 1st half Sue and and Grant were getting held down to no avail.
Our defence has improved greatly…..a few lapses to be expected playing with 16 players and basically 6 interchanges.
No complaints great effort.

 

[ricksen]

The pleasing thing is that the structure looks good - communication is obviously pretty good. Just need to cut out the dumb stuff - three of the four tries were just really bad misses (Simona and co for the first try, Moses and Lovett for the second, Sue and Ava for Taupau).
Linespeed still isn't there either, but we're winning more tackles than previously.

 

[Tigerdon]

I thought our line speed was OK. we were coming up together and the third tackler always made a really good effort to get back into the line so we were set for the next play. we didn't give them much through the middle and our edge defence was really good as well.

 

[magpiecol]

It looks stronger in terms of first up contact and not conceeding offloads.

It has also improved in terms of territory not conceeding cheap 10 and 12 metre charges.

However we still give up some really soft tries and line breaks.

In both games we have looked in quick sand at certain points.

Needs to improve to trouble the heavyweights.

Manly and the Warriors are not "heavyweights'?

 

[Goose]

It looks stronger in terms of first up contact and not conceeding offloads.

It has also improved in terms of territory not conceeding cheap 10 and 12 metre charges.

However we still give up some really soft tries and line breaks.

In both games we have looked in quick sand at certain points.

Needs to improve to trouble the heavyweights.

Manly and the Warriors are not "heavyweights'?

I tipped Manly to come first and Warriors 4th before a ball was kicked this season. Im happy with the wins!

Though the defence has been reasonable. We have conceded a few tries against the run of play and and a few against a mountain of possession. It is not perfect but improving.

Our discipline has been poor. We have conceded some stupid penalties whilst under no pressure at all in both games. I think the 50/50's went against us quite a bit last night, but most of them were us not getting a penalty when we should have. The Simona one when he was in the air and Aloaia were the 2 that were most dubious. Apart from the penalty when Tommy Trobjovic dropped it (which could have went either way) all the other penalties were deserved, and most of them were not results from losing the ruck and being forced into an infringement, most were just silly. That is our biggest area for improvement.