Just a disappointing day all 3 grades losing to a much more professional Panthers club.
To the eye, in both NRL & Cup, the Panthers players just look more physically suitable to their positions (whether size, speed or power) than ours and look way more disciplined in their structures. We knew this beforehand but the gap is still sizable.
We started as the better team but Panthers got a try against the run when Liddiard out-contested Mason taking a cross-field bomb to score. From memory that was one of Mason's few blemishes and was our or one of our best on the day.
A big positive were the performances of Josese Lanyon & Bailey Hodges - both smart & skillful footballers who keep getting better this season as hooker/lock utilities.
Aho has a huge engine and worked his ass off & both edge backrowers were very good, Tony Sukkar and Mitch Taotua.
IMO Sukkar did enough to return to 1st grade next week.
Mitch Taotua is the one who has the physical & athletic traits for NRL as a backrower, I'd just like to see him get involved more in attack as he can break the line, great post contact and has ball skills.
Faainga was found out defensively and we made the same mistakes in defence multiple times getting caught on overlap when our wingers positioned too close to the centre.
PS. Javon Andrews is not ready for NRL. Let him develop in Cup. Still needs to work on his lateral defence and is now being given more license to be our general play kicker but atm his general field kicking is only average.
