The first half was the only relevant guage, if at all, and there wasn't that much between the 2 teams, even though I thought Manly looked rustier than us for the most part of the first 40.
Their first try had me a bit worried with our ball watching and backpeddling, just like last season, 10 metres out from our line. Apart from that, we had a few unlucky moments and tries disallowed, we probably were on top for our fair share of the half. DCE delivered a couple of quality kicks and Turbo was the biggest difference. They scored a try when we had a man down, and another when we were asleep with seconds on the clock.
The biggest concerns for me were our weakness in D out wide on Pauga and Noffa's side (again), our lack of constructive play from dummy half (again), our lack of aggressive running and tackling from our pack again) - all issues we continued from last season and don't yet seem to have addressed.
Until our forwards start doing the mauling instead of getting mauled, we will never get on the right side of the winners ledger.