Thing about yesterday's game, there may have been some unrealistic expectations about what the Tigers are currently capable of. Yes Tigers were pretty ordinary in attack, pretty flat, but you are not going to be on song with a record of 1 W 6L. That's unrealistic. Obviously the team is struggling for cohesion and fluidity.
All you can ask in those circumstances is that every player turns up and does their best, does their job. And then if you can't win pretty, win ugly.
For example Tigers had some 57% of possession and there will be those folks who criticise that for only resulting in 16 points. OK sure, but that also misses the fact that by having 57% of possession you restrict the opposition to 43% of possession. In other words, you don't have to score 30 points if you can keep your opposition to less than 10 points. In fact, if you keep your opponent to < 10 points you win 95% of matches.
What the team did yesterday was similar to the performance against Souths - just kept turning up, kept digging in. The primary difference between the two matches was that Souths have match-turning players that St George do not have. Also, with our defence being solid and ability to get repeat sets, we won the arm-wrestle with Saints over 80 mins, to the point that they were struggling to mount any meaningful fightback even when they were able to get their run of possession. Injuries notwithstanding, even Ennis in commentary, about 10 mins to go, said "Dragons are on the ropes here".
The main point underlying the whole match was if Tigers play like that every week, we put ourselves in the position to win every week. It's what Madge keeps saying. Doesn't mean we are playing great, but it means we graft out matches, develop confidence, iron-out the kinks in our play, work hard for each other, make oppositions nervous to play us, get respect from the fans. What we can't afford are the Cowboys and Manly games in-between the better efforts.
