Was a real buzz around the ground early, good support from both sides and with Galvin with beautiful touches for the first two tries it looked like our early jitters were turning around. Then the rest of the game happened.
I think Richo was talking before the game about Penrith winning big in final round of 03 before going on to win gf the next year and drawing parallels between them and us. It's a classic example of winning the game before we played it and then producing a dud performance when we actually play that is so typical of leaders in our club. Somehow we win a game or two and we're planning for grand finals without focusing on the thing in front of us.
In a way, as this is who we are, it's better we show our colours rather than play in a way that allows the club to feel like what has been happening is good enough. It's clearly not. Who there is good enough to change it?
It was sad watching Api out there. Benji ran him into the ground this year. Everyone here saw he was being overused and it didn't help us win squat.
On the other hand I enjoyed seeing the young players given a go and they mostly held up well. Mason has plenty of errors in him but also a lot of talent.
It was a particularly disappointing season from our experienced forward pack. They were awful this year.
There's been no improvement to our ability to control the speed of the ruck and create it ourselves. It doesn't matter who we buy, this is step one.
A lot of talk about effort and not giving up from Benji. I hope next year that applies to things like chasing the kick and trying to tackle and wrapping the ball up.
As disappointing as our forwards were, you could argue our backs are worse. Not able to gain metres on early tackles, get themselves mixed up on attacking movements, poor defensive reads and often just outmuscled, there's not a lot that's promising in that bunch. But I think unlike our forwards, they're not a well credentialed bunch.
Thanks to you all on the fan forum for enduring it all. Hard not to feel sometimes like the tigers are some strange manifestation of our psyche and that their play is inextricably tied to some fundamental chasm in the centre of our collective social structure. That or it's just another footy game.
