Look this was a very disappointing game for us. Very disjointed, no-one was on the same page, we looked clueless and out of sync. Dogs also played some players from Nsw cup but were a much hungrier and more efficient team. Dogs probably had 60%+. They ran harder, tackled harder and just played to win while our guys were going through the motions.
Really there wasn't a single good player for us from this game. The defence of our forwards was incredibly disappointing. Our pack got dominated. O'Kane had no impact on the game and got brushed off in defence a few times. Fainu went off with an injury in first half but came back on with 15 or so to go. Tuki was invisible. Pole worked hard but wasn't noticeable. Lolesio made a couple of decent runs and tackles but also made some poor errors. Vaihu very error prone.
In the backs it seems clear that Bula is a winger, yet we persist with him at fullback. He's an athletic player but with no ball playing skills, he's a runner and finisher. Tupou has been playing fullback in nsw cup yet played wing in his match and looked very unsure of what to do out wide. Several times he was in a one on one with his opponent 5m out but he couldn't decide whether to go for the corner or step inside and his delayed step inside was covered by the defence. His last attempt to score in the corner resulted in an awkward motion where it looked like the tackler landed on his wrist as he reached out, he was down for a couple of mins then went off after that.
The general kicking game of our halves was very poor. Camroux did try a few short chips after noticing the fullback was deep but they were all too deep/short and came to nothing other than giving them field position.
LSaukuru touched the ball a couple of times, a very lazy player. Delle got pushed into touch at least once and doesn't seem up to this grade at this stage. Picken was erratic. A couple of very strong runs and then twice dropped it while playing the ball on the first, and made some both good and bad reads rushing in from defence. Lomi came on in the middle of the match, and went off later in the game after hurting his hand.
The team really missed having Tumeth and Matamua out there. Matamua provides the ball playing to what is otherwise an extremely one dimensional pack, Tumeth runs and tackles hard, something that these boys all lacked. With Tannous out as well we seemed a bit slow around the ruck.
Perhaps it was just an off day but this really was a terrible performance, albeit against a reasonably strong opponent. Their half was excellent, kicking was superb, and they had a couple of big forwards that made ours look tiny in comparison. Our inability to stop forwards offloading within our 20m line was a big part of them scoring.
