jirskyr
Well-known member
I had a bit of a revelation today about Taylor's coaching plan.
At the 70 min mark I was wondering where the heck we were going to get points from. Brooks and Moses didn't do much of anything except bomb, and we took lots of hitups without much ball movement.
Honestly the second half was 30 minutes of quite boring football and Parra just returned the favour. Though I thought we were gradually winning the arm-wrestle, the physical battle, I was totally unconvinced that we could lay on points.
Then Parra crack under pressure, we jag a try and it quickly becomes 3 tries. We did something like this to the Doggies last week too, turned one try into several, after appearing to have had nothing in attack.
And I wondered to myself, at fulltime, if Taylor actually wanted us to be boring and methodical all along, that he believes we can score points if we keep at it for 80 minutes.
The defence was good. Sure Eels struggled for cohesion, but we defended our line a lot today and they only managed a DH try. Often it is defence that causes opposition attacks to crumble. In fact I'd say the defence was better than good, I have a new-found confidence in our ability to hold teams out. Besides a brilliant 10 mins from Inglis and a few good tries from a desperate Dogs outfit, we've equipped ourselves well in defence. I believe missed tackles are down across the entire group and we aren't brittle on our goal line.
Potter spoke a lot last year about earning the right to play expansive football, about being risky only when we had the field position. It never really happened.
This 2015 team actually looks like producing on that plan. We still make lots of dumb decisions in attack and can give away a poor penalty, but we have at times become stubbornly conservative in an attempt to play ourselves into dominance. The team appears fit enough to compete for 80 against anyone, and when our ball control is good, we take games to the wire.
So today was ugly, odd to watch, at times worrisome. But we do have game breakers, it has been proven, and we held Parra scoreless for 51 minutes. Parra have not scored less than 12 in previous games and accounted for Souths last week.
We've got a long way to go, but maybe Taylor is onto something?
At the 70 min mark I was wondering where the heck we were going to get points from. Brooks and Moses didn't do much of anything except bomb, and we took lots of hitups without much ball movement.
Honestly the second half was 30 minutes of quite boring football and Parra just returned the favour. Though I thought we were gradually winning the arm-wrestle, the physical battle, I was totally unconvinced that we could lay on points.
Then Parra crack under pressure, we jag a try and it quickly becomes 3 tries. We did something like this to the Doggies last week too, turned one try into several, after appearing to have had nothing in attack.
And I wondered to myself, at fulltime, if Taylor actually wanted us to be boring and methodical all along, that he believes we can score points if we keep at it for 80 minutes.
The defence was good. Sure Eels struggled for cohesion, but we defended our line a lot today and they only managed a DH try. Often it is defence that causes opposition attacks to crumble. In fact I'd say the defence was better than good, I have a new-found confidence in our ability to hold teams out. Besides a brilliant 10 mins from Inglis and a few good tries from a desperate Dogs outfit, we've equipped ourselves well in defence. I believe missed tackles are down across the entire group and we aren't brittle on our goal line.
Potter spoke a lot last year about earning the right to play expansive football, about being risky only when we had the field position. It never really happened.
This 2015 team actually looks like producing on that plan. We still make lots of dumb decisions in attack and can give away a poor penalty, but we have at times become stubbornly conservative in an attempt to play ourselves into dominance. The team appears fit enough to compete for 80 against anyone, and when our ball control is good, we take games to the wire.
So today was ugly, odd to watch, at times worrisome. But we do have game breakers, it has been proven, and we held Parra scoreless for 51 minutes. Parra have not scored less than 12 in previous games and accounted for Souths last week.
We've got a long way to go, but maybe Taylor is onto something?