LIVE GAME Round 9 versus Sharks

[Tucker]

I am not going to sit here and defend the way the Tigers played today. I truly believe that was on-par, or if not worse than some of our absolute most diabolical performances over the last 15 years. What am going to do is defend that scoreline against the statistics though. I am not taking away too much from that game given the Tigers got exactly what the numbers show they should have.

17 errors.

61% completion.

37% possession.

That scoreline is exactly what I would expect from any other team conceding those numbers. The whole issue is that the errors were made that led to those numbers. When you look at it from that perspective, did the Sharks really put the knife in and twist like other teams would have? I don't know. That is up to you to decide.

Where the statistics are very interesting to me is that the defensive statistics are actually... Not that damning against the Tigers? We had a higher effective tackle rate, and less ineffective tackles. The Sharks only managed to have 2 more line-breaks, and 4 more tackle-breaks despite having close to double the possession and run meters. Offensively speaking, the Sharks had 2 offloads and a total of 200 kicking meters more than the Tigers.

Considering where the Tigers have come from when I look at those numbers I don't walk away from that game thinking the house has collapsed. There is actually some absolutely elite defensive efforts in that Tigers team today. I am pretty confident that with less errors we would have been looking at a much different game.

That is where I think the Tigers need to pat themselves on the back because the actual issue leading to the possession and field position issues are identifiable and correctable. I am walking away from today not actually feeling that bad about it, honestly.

Yes I agree with a lot of this.
That Scoreline was largely self inflicted.
Sharkies were good, but not great. They were dominant without blowing us away. They attacked the side of the field that has barely played any footy this year and capitalised on their poor work.

At the start of the game, I thought the team that was actually blowing the other away was us to them. The Doueihi and May tries were badass attacking football that they had no answer to despite being at full strength. Errors kept Cronulla in the contest and our guys just gassed out due to continually handing the ball over. The defensive stats of the pack as a whole is encouraging. They put in a lot of work at a high standard. As far as floggings go, we’ve had far worse and to be honest I did expect a loss today based on personnel missing.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that we are facing extended periods without some very good players and our depth aren’t up to standard yet. The Storm and the Eagles will be tough games and they will both look to exploit our weak backline. After the bye we cop Dogs and Penrith and they could be brutal affairs as well. A very tough month or so coming up, which will provide some excellent learning curves and data on who is worth keeping in this roster. Our outside back options are low on experience and all contenders have individually lost us games over the past 12 months or so. Let’s see who is prepared to dig in and earn their place in this side.

 

[jadtiger]

Even in the first half when the score line was still close, Tigers were struggling to get any roll on out of their own territory. Part of it was errors - dropped ball, pushed passes, etc. - but the other contributor was poor service out of dummy half. Hope’s passes are fractionally slower than Api’s, he doesn’t get it out in front of the receiver and bring them on to the ball and so the defence is on top of them before they can get any momentum. If we didn’t appreciate how important Api is to our team, we should now. He’s the drummer of the band. Hope tries hard, but not a first grade dummy half.

Api also leads our defensive line with his enthusiasm,we mised him terribly yesterday and will for another 2 weeks.Unfortunately unlike previous years we have nobody capable of replacing him for any length of time,Hope is barely reggie standard and Latu and Madden are halves who would be wasted at 9 unless used very sparingly.
It was very unfortunate TDS decided to chase the money at Parra instead of continuing his apprenticeship with us.

 

[Love_the_WestsTigers]

Api also leads our defensive line with his enthusiasm,we mised him terribly yesterday and will for another 2 weeks.Unfortunately unlike previous years we have nobody capable of replacing him for any length of time,Hope is barely reggie standard and Latu and Madden are halves who would be wasted at 9 unless used very sparingly.
It was very unfortunate TDS decided to chase the money at Parra instead of continuing his apprenticeship with us.

It’s not just the intent and enthusiasm Api brings. His effort and determination to keep going is phenomenal.
Heart and soul of the team imo.

 

[Sully]

Yesterday was disappointing to watch and losing AD took 75% of our best spine out of the match. We did not have line speed in defence which has been our success slowing the play the ball down and pushing sides back in defence. Agree it had been Api leading this most weeks and he is greatly missed.
The last few years the right side has been our issue and when we had KPP it tighten up that side with AD to be able to carry a young player like Tavana. Yesterday I would have had Skelton for his defence and strong carries.

Like a lot of people have said Toa was terrible and the effort called out by Benji would be squarely on him as you have to attempt a tackle to miss it and he was a turnstile and knew they were coming his way. I was also disappointed in Turuva as fullback also when he was not attacking the bombs.

Brailey controlled the ruck speed and we were on the back foot all second half which I believe with Api in our side would not have happened.

This week will see if we have improved culture as they should be up for the fight.

 

[Odessa]

Yesterday was disappointing to watch and losing AD took 75% of our best spine out of the match. We did not have line speed in defence which has been our success slowing the play the ball down and pushing sides back in defence. Agree it had been Api leading this most weeks and he is greatly missed.
The last few years the right side has been our issue and when we had KPP it tighten up that side with AD to be able to carry a young player like Tavana. Yesterday I would have had Skelton for his defence and strong carries.

Like a lot of people have said Toa was terrible and the effort called out by Benji would be squarely on him as you have to attempt a tackle to miss it and he was a turnstile and knew they were coming his way. I was also disappointed in Turuva as fullback also when he was not attacking the bombs.

Brailey controlled the ruck speed and we were on the back foot all second half which I believe with Api in our side would not have happened.

This week will see if we have improved culture as they should be up for the fight.

Apparently Hope has only played 73 minutes of reserve grade and 20 minutes of First grade before yesterday so no running in his legs

Murray in reserve grade has been on fire and has played big minutes this year

Maybe Murray will start at 9 and Hope off the bench against Melbourne


Benji I think gave them to much rest with 10 days off to recover and recharge mentally which will be good later but not for yesterday and Cronulla was just to hungry

 

[cktiger]

Did u watch the game?
See the score?
See his effort
Observe his leadership
It wasn't xactlygreat..but only 18 months to go so nothing to see here folks.
The term rubbish cld refer to any of the above for a bloke were still paying 1.2 mill a year
I'm undrrwhelmed

Yeah, I saw the game.
You obviously just watched one bloke, that you obviously don’t like, and not the bumbling efforts of the forwards repeatedly handing the ball over to Cronulla so they could attack our inept right hand defence.
I saw outside backs gifting the other teams points.
I’m not sure what you expected Luai to do?
Run to the right wing to catch the ball every time it was kicked? Try and teach Toa how to tackle on the run … or the rest of his teammates to hold on to a football?
I saw us play with no possession in the second half due to the errors of his teammates.
Fact is you couldn’t fault his effort and putting the blame on him for that loss is ridiculous.

 

[twentyforty]

Flippedy, not that we dont have the depth to cover, we do. Problem we have atm is with Douhi and Fainu out our 5 top performers week in and week out are on the sideline. We can cover 2 maybe 3 if the stars align during the game. But im not too sure many teams wouldnt really struggle with their top 5 performers on the side line. Granted though Fainu had a shocker tonight.

It also doesn’t help to have Madden spending most of his time on the pine losing match fitness.

 

[Alex.Angelakis]

Defence was awful yesterday two players cost us the many try's tavana and Stafford toa sharkes identified this and the attack went their way witch cost us try's put them back in reserve grade to learn how to tackle with the injures we have now we are going to struggle.

 

[Odessa]

Hope is no API, but don’t make stupid comments like he isn’t reserve grade standard when he was the best player in the reserve grade team in the only game he played a few weeks ago.

And Da Silva thought he was an NRL player when he clearly isn’t yet. He would’ve been better served playing reserve grade here this season and developing his game for the future, rather than bit parts at Parra now and treading water as a standard of player.

Hope will be much better this week after the run against Cronulla has not played many minutes this year at all

 

[Chunk]

Defence was awful yesterday two players cost us the many try's tavana and Stafford toa sharkes identified this and the attack went their way witch cost us try's put them back in reserve grade to learn how to tackle with the injures we have now we are going to struggle.

Yes it was but it wasn’t the only major concern?

Didn’t we only have 25% possession in the second half and only 40% overall.

That’s insane if true, it obviously makes defence incredibly difficult, so errors were the main concern. I don’t think I’ve seen a player drop the ball so much, the winger.

 

[Charred]

Well I’m glad I got called into work yesterday and didn’t have to witness whatever happened. Don’t even want to try watching or reading about it.

 

[Betterdays22]

No team in over 100 years of rugby league has ever won a comp after conceding 50 points in a game. Yes, u can say, there’s always a first, but history doesn’t back that.
All from a really bad call by Benji to not replace s player who’s confidence was obviously shot.
Watch the game again if u dare (I won’t), u will see that nearly all attacking play further guppies came from a Tavana error.

If you honestly thought we were winning the comp this year you were deluded.

Still plenty to play for, namely first finals appearance in 15 years...

 

[Betterdays22]

I am not going to sit here and defend the way the Tigers played today. I truly believe that was on-par, or if not worse than some of our absolute most diabolical performances over the last 15 years. What am going to do is defend that scoreline against the statistics though. I am not taking away too much from that game given the Tigers got exactly what the numbers show they should have.

17 errors.

61% completion.

37% possession.

That scoreline is exactly what I would expect from any other team conceding those numbers. The whole issue is that the errors were made that led to those numbers. When you look at it from that perspective, did the Sharks really put the knife in and twist like other teams would have? I don't know. That is up to you to decide.

Where the statistics are very interesting to me is that the defensive statistics are actually... Not that damning against the Tigers? We had a higher effective tackle rate, and less ineffective tackles. The Sharks only managed to have 2 more line-breaks, and 4 more tackle-breaks despite having close to double the possession and run meters. Offensively speaking, the Sharks had 2 offloads and a total of 200 kicking meters more than the Tigers.

Considering where the Tigers have come from when I look at those numbers I don't walk away from that game thinking the house has collapsed. There is actually some absolutely elite defensive efforts in that Tigers team today. I am pretty confident that with less errors we would have been looking at a much different game.

That is where I think the Tigers need to pat themselves on the back because the actual issue leading to the possession and field position issues are identifiable and correctable. I am walking away from today not actually feeling that bad about it, honestly.

I dont think it was a total system breakdown either. It was individual errors and a lack of resilience, effort and concentration by certain players in key moments.

 

[TheEnz]

Not sure what he was going to do there.

Madden had already been committed to the game as had Hunt an Sione. At half time we were still in it and the big clangers from Tavana were yet to come. His confidence at that stage was not in bits. A bit of a pep talk at half time - telling him that he had earnt the spot and that the team had confidence in him was expected to encourage his confidence.

The problem really didn't raise its ugly head until the second half where we had no possession and were constantly defending in our own half. Benji had a decison to hook Tavana and have no middle or perservere and try to shore up the middle with Seyfarth. As it was we then lost Sam F and the fatigue cycle really set in - more errors, poor decsions, poor reads etc.

Benji had to make a call on hooking Tavana or keeping up the middle rotation. He made that choice and will have to live with it - but if he made it the other way I doub't result would have been much different. Completely gassed middles creating the errors instead of Tavana.

Our second half was simply poor, and Tavana/Toa were a big part of that. Once the momentum went the Sharks way we simply couldn't compete with the fatigue factor. Flush this game and move on - the kid goes back to Cup and gets some time to rebuild his confidence while Benji identifies a way to deal with restructuring around the injuries.

It wasnt just Tavana, it was also Toa and Madden, bringing skelton in was no guarantee that the defence and kick diffusal was going to improve. Once KPP was out they were targetting that edge and then AD gone only made it easier for them. I would have replaced AD with Latu as there were early signs they were going after that edge and he is a better defender than Madden.

 

[Halbrowne61]

While I may have missed it, I can’t remember Luai going over to the winger and giving him some support ! Sometimes some consoling words from the skipper can help.

 

[lathami]

If you honestly thought we were winning the comp this year you were deluded.

Still plenty to play for, namely first finals appearance in 15 years...

That is true and fair, but plenty would have said that in 2005! This comp really could be anyone’s to win.

 

[TheEnz]

Having thought about that game a bit more the player I am most disappointed in is Madden, Toa has been disappointing in 90% of the games he has played so no surprise and Tavana crapped the bed, however he is still a kid. Madden needed to exploit that wind in the second half and try and get us some decent field position with a kick very early in the tackle count, yet he did not do it and we kept trying to push passes to get around them in our own half, this invariably led to errors and turnovers. his defense was woeful as well, hopefully its a good and timely kick in the arse for him and the rest of the team and coaching staff. Most of us expected we would lose that game so perhaps getting 50 put on us in a game we were expecting to drop will be a positive over the rest of the season.

 

[Milky]

That is true and fair, but plenty would have said that in 2005! This comp really could be anyone’s to win.

Doubt it is us who does it but I think the 50 points no premiership hoodoo will be broken this year

Its an attacking game nowdays, 50 points is almost the new norm

Won’t be long before we see a 54-50 scoreline

 

[Twodogs]

Api also leads our defensive line with his enthusiasm,we mised him terribly yesterday and will for another 2 weeks.Unfortunately unlike previous years we have nobody capable of replacing him for any length of time,Hope is barely reggie standard and Latu and Madden are halves who would be wasted at 9 unless used very sparingly.
It was very unfortunate TDS decided to chase the money at Parra instead of continuing his apprenticeship with us.

So it wasn't to get a starting place, just money. Well good on him but Parra paid heaps for a depth signing, but must cost them elsewhere.

 

[Twodogs]

Yes it was but it wasn’t the only major concern?

Didn’t we only have 25% possession in the second half and only 40% overall.

That’s insane if true, it obviously makes defence incredibly difficult, so errors were the main concern. I don’t think I’ve seen a player drop the ball so much, the winger.

Benji is slow to hook and when he does it's sometimes the wrong player. Still learning though.