Gotta be honest, I find it amusing that Brooks’ game only went up a notch, he’s been playing like that all season. The extra 10% was a reflection of the result of improved team performance. I know I keep banging on about this, but Brooks is the canary in the mine shaft, there’s so much focus on him that the other players don’t get scrutinised for their bad play.
Exhibit A last week
Cini drops 5 bombs and we concede 18 points in 15 mins on the opposite side to Brooks. Yet he was still the most talked about player because he messed up a kick when the game was lost anyways
The difference last night was our forwards actually laid a solid platform and ran with intent
I can't speak for everyone, but when I'm critical of Brooks it's not to say he costs us the game.
He rarely does, my point is usually we need better. And I'll stick by it.
As I've said in a recent post - I started to question Brooks only earlier this season, so I've been patient. And I WANT him to succeed. That's another assumption people have when someone is critical of him, that we don't want him to succeed. Far from it.
I hope he, and the rest of the team, can play the way they did for the majority of last night.
It wasn’t too dissimilar to his game against Saints & Titans imo. Only difference is he scored a try
Last night we had a stack of possession and the scoreline at half time reflected that. For the first time this year I thought our attack flowed, and yes I’ll give credit to mbye. Don’t get me wrong Doueihi is a fine 5/8 but he still has a lot to learn when it comes to knowing when to distribute the ball to his outside men
Nah, he did nothing against titans. His kicking was 100 times better yesterday as was his running game.
Loved how we threw the ball around last night, we look so much more dangerous when we pass it around and players are pushing up onto the footy and it's all effort
Last night he played with freedom, it’s how he’s been playing the entire season but with no support. Last night (well atleast for half of it) is the first time this year I could say the entire team had a dig (apart from souffs) which in itself lifted Brook’s game that little bit extra
Sure, everyone else playing with effort helps but it's not that that was the big difference it was execution. He wasn't doing his silly dummy and step into forwards, his kicks weren't awful, individually he was miles better than most his games this year. For the first time this season he looked like he knew what he was doing and didn't doubt himself every time he touched the footy. Long kicking was noticeably better
And that is because we broke Newcastle. They were on the back foot the entire 1st half with no answer. It’s amazing how simplified the game is for your halfback when you are so dominant
We had dragons on the back foot plenty of times and he stuffed up plenty of chances - was much more composed yesterday than previous games.
I’ll let Madge and Doueihi take the reigns then ... post game interviews both of them pretty much said his game hadn’t really changed from previous weeks