LIVE GAME Round 1 vs Knights

[Yossarian]

I haven't scrolled back too far, but I'm assuming you are talking about the car park right next to the station.
I made that mistake once, thought I had a great spot until after the game. It was at least 30 mins to get out that day too. Suffice to say It has never happened again.

Yeah the station car park. Look I assumed it would be slow going and I’d accept 30 minutes but it didn’t move an inch for 40 minutes. Once we were moving the crawl out was okay. Turns out there may have been some emergency thing going on on which explains why it was static rather than slow.

 

[hank37w]

100% agree. We missed multiple tackles when they scored their

100% agree. We missed multiple consecutive tackles when they scored their try’s. If we miss half those back to back to back to back misses they probably don’t score.
The only reason the scoreline flattered us was Newcastle couldn’t handle the ball or ice the last pass.
Happy if you disagree, your entitled to your opinion.

They could have easily beaten us by 20 or 30 if they had an ounce of luck.

Pretty flattering scoreline for us and don't expect the rub of the green from the refs every week either.

Harsh maybe, but never the less, true.

 

[hank37w]

No way the Titans will

I dream of having some of the attacking strike they have.

 

[Furious1]

51 missed tackles, 7 line breaks conceded, yet 2 tries conceded. Put that into context.

Mate I understand what you are saying. Your happy with the effort to keep it to 2 tries. I'm happy there was effort too, but the only context I'm really interested in is 51 tackles missed. Against the Knights. God help us if had of been Manly, Broncos etc and thats not to say the Knights are shit, but attack wise they are not on the same tier as some of these other sides.
Im sure you remember when Ivan Cleary took over as coach. We had a horror draw to start the season playing the previous years top 4 ( melbourne twice) in the first 6 weeks. From memory we won 5 of 6. The effort and scramble in defence was great, but it wasn't sustainable and we missed the 8.
Simply put, you can kiss the 8 goodbye already if thats going to be our defence every week.

 

[boonboon]

I think we also need to remember missing from our top 30 this week we had
Bula
Naden
Toa
Olam
Api
Klemmer
Tumeth
Luke Laulii

Plus one spot sitting empty - that's 9 spots out of our top 30 unavailable. That's a lot of money and talent on the sidelines

 

[Yossarian]

Was that because he was 20m in field when Ponga through the ball out to best? It’s like everyone except for bird watched the ball go over the sideline; oh wait. It didn’t. Bird was wrong footed but I can’t fault him for his effort to cover. Had our winger, centre and fullback be there also it may have been different.

Others were to blame but Bird got to their winger and made a poor effort. It was after the pass from Best.

 

[jrtiger]

Positives:
- When the game got into a grind we looked solid. Our yardage game is strong, our forwards looked to offload and our halves kicked well from midfield, backed up by our kick chase.

- Effort areas were where they needed to be. Kick chase, kick pressure, linespeed, defensive scramble were all pleasing aspects. I think it's clear they're playing for each other and their coach.

Negatives:
- Without Api and Bula our attack was very poor. I genuinely think they improve us by three tries.

Galvin constantly moving sideways first and then taking the wrong option was ugly to watch. Our left edge saw zero early ball, while our right edge saw zero ball period. The set on Newcastle's line 15 out from full time explains why Api and Jahream are so important. if this is now Jarome Luai's team, he needs to start showing it.

- 55 missed tackles isn't good enough. The Dogs proved last year you can miss a few, but 55? Ugly. Fonua Pole's almost at the point where he needs to be dropped to NSW Cup until he gets it right. The Schiller break was atrocious as well.

- While Api and Bula improve us by three tries, if Newcastle executed correctly they still would've outscored us. Seyfarth getting caught at second marker when Lucas split us open is the type of braindead defensive decision that has typified our descent down the ladder. Sharpe scoring the play after was extremely ugly as well.

TLDR: as Marshall said a lot of what we wanted to improve on looks to be trending in the right direction, but you can't miss 55 tackles in the NRL and expect to win. our red zone attack will improve with the injection of class and experience, but much to be done on the other side of the ball, as a lot of us anticipated.

 

[Blocker1963]

For what my opinion is worth, looking at other games over the weekend, our attacking structures are very poor, one out running with no width or depth, and when the opportunity existed, no structured ability to create the extra man. Look at the Storm and how they operate. Also we have no speed to create opportunities, we need a decent centre and big mobile edge back rowers on either side. As much as I hoped the coaching was going to be better, it is not.

 

[mikey]

While disappointed by the lack of attacking structure and missed tackles last weekend (I was really pissed off watching the match), I'm going to hold judgement till around Round 4. New combos and players out have a big impact, especially when the replacements have little experience.
Hoping for a better performance this week. The Slime will be looking for a win to show they are better than yesterday.

 

[mtd#2]

we still have a long way to go...
short 2 x centres
defensively we could open up like the eels vs the storm

 

[Mighty Mouse]

I just watched the Rabbitohs v dolphins mini. How about the rabbits getting up? A currently poorer roster than ours got up against a better team by defending tough, and using simple structures in attack. I just don’t get our attack. We were completely impotent for 50 minutes of the game and continued the same way with one out runs with zero support…. Baffling.

 

[innsaneink]

Wont be long before we play the way we did on Friday for 75% of the game then start throwing it around once it's too late

 

[Rock Hopper Steve]

For what my opinion is worth, looking at other games over the weekend, our attacking structures are very poor, one out running with no width or depth, and when the opportunity existed, no structured ability to create the extra man. Look at the Storm and how they operate. Also we have no speed to create opportunities, we need a decent centre and big mobile edge back rowers on either side. As much as I hoped the coaching was going to be better, it is not.

Using the cliche a lot of us use it's only one game if Benji doesn't come up with some better ideas in attack soon we will be looking for that deserted island to dump him on, hoping it was a simple plan last Friday because of all the new recruits together for the first time.

 

[Needaname]

Wont be long before we play the way we did on Friday for 75% of the game then start throwing it around once it's too late

I made a joke once to myself that each year of our Wooden Spoon reign we are displaying more ability to stay in the contest.
I factored the following.
In 2022 we weren't in the contest from the opening kick off.
In 2023 we showed signs that we were a team and in the game for the first 20mins and once the possession and territory turned we were blown away.
In 2024 we showed signs we could compete for at least half a game to 50mins when the game was a contest being blown away from class after the half.
I predicted this year we will stay in matches for the majority of the game and maybe loose in the last 10.
Keen to see if this is our season or if we go one better and close down tight games.
So far we’ve come out of the blocks close to how we finished off the last quarter of last season.

 

[Bigscreentv]

I think Warriors, Titans and Roosters might beat us to the spoon. Fingers crossed!

Don’t forget the eels!

 

[das tigers]

Our backrow and centres really wasn't NRL level standard or have impact.Just don't
hit lines at speed at the gaps.No threats still in this area.

Luai was palming it off to Galvin all day. Nothing on so pass to Galvin.

Galvin had the edges (backrow,centre then winger) so compressed drifting over for easy
defense read. Ponga had every grubber covered too.

Slow pass kills me and as slow running.No angles just NSW cup hit up stuff.

This really has to do with coaching. We always struggle to score points and it shows they
haven't been doing much in this area. Like hit and hope style of plays with easy reads for the
defence.

We always hear defence wins game or we're focusing on our defence.

Benji,attack wins games too. Benji wasn't picked for his defence.

Do we put any focus on attack? I'm mean at training.

We had everything going for us the other day. Every call was our way.

We look every bit of a bottom 4 team.Just so far away from the top teams.

 

[old_man_tiger]

I just watched the Rabbitohs v dolphins mini. How about the rabbits getting up? A currently poorer roster than ours got up against a better team by defending tough, and using simple structures in attack. I just don’t get our attack. We were completely impotent for 50 minutes of the game and continued the same way with one out runs with zero support…. Baffling.

MM, I think you nailed it. Souffs had a simple structure in attack.
We had no structure in attack.

 

[prattenhero]

And our PTB is just soooo Slowwwww

 

[jrtiger]

And our PTB is just soooo Slowwwww

yes, but how much of that was attributed to the Knights slowing the play down? Newcastle had zero ruck infringements on Friday, according to the referee. I find that extremely hard to believe.

 

[prattenhero]

While that is true jrt it seemed to me that from the time we are on our feet ready to ptb till the ball was at the dh was slow