Terrible squad. We overachieved this year. We won half a dozen games by 1-2 points that could go either way. Not to mention the back run of the year when we played Raiders, Knights, Manly, Dragons were all games that if there was another few minutes we looked shot. We never ever finished over the top of any team as we had no quality.
The last round was indicative of where we are at. Was an NRL side vs a reserve grade side. The worst thing is we barely had anyone out to make excuses. If those top teams turn up to play we are done. We may have lost a bit of deadwood as people say, but the emergence of Sue in the backhalf of the year was a major reason we started winning again (the only forward who could go over the advantage line).
The pack is not good enough and the backs can't create anything to compensate for it. One good signing of Matterson will not solve anything.
Your argument is illogical.
Firstly, winning "half a dozen" games by 1-2 points is actually quite good, in a season of 24 matches, so long as you don't lose another 12 games by 1-2 points. Most teams win about half of the close ones and in fact Tigers were 5-4 in games decided by 2 points or less, so better than average. You can't decry the wins "that could have gone either way", because they didn't go the other way. A close win is not a loss.
In terms of "finishing over the top", not quite sure what you mean. We did not dominate many games apart from the Manly and Souths ones, but we certainly finished over the top of several sides - esp. Melbourne twice and Roosters. It's very hard for you to be making a point about not finishing over the top of anyone, when factually we did exactly that against both Grand Finalists in both games.
The team achieved what they achieved. They can clearly do better, they can also obviously do worse. Unless you are proposing that Tigers played a perfect season in 2018, and could not possibly do any better, then it is always possible that Tigers can improve rather than regress.
Its not illogical. Yes they are good wins but on another year they can go either way and I would fear that next year. Sure you can use the inverse but I felt there were far more games that we won that we were holding on, than games that we lost where you could of said "5 more mins and we had them". The Roosters is the only loss where I felt we were coming home. Even The Eels 2 point loss, we didn't look likely to score that winner at all in the last 10….just zero attack. As I said, that run of Canberra, Saints, Manly and Knights, it felt like another few minutes in all those games and we were done in all of them. Great that we held on, but it shows a bit where we are at and that another year (next year) it could be a lot worse, hence why i fear that.
If you number our side player for player vs any team in the comp and merged them, we would be lucky to have 6 in any starting team in the comp, in some examples we would have zero of our players make another side. Literally zero. Its an ordinary roster.
