Kelce68
Well-known member
The team selections lost the game yesterday.
With no Hastings there was no holding of the middle or straightening the attack on backline plays. This led us to just going side to side, which ran us out of space. Add to that Newcastle played very up and in, which we tried to counter by running deeper, but the only player straightening and digging into the line on the sweep, of all players, was a 27-old reserves player and debutant in Freebairn, whose service was ok, especially considering no-one else was doing it.
Jock and Doueihi came up with repeated bad choices at the end of sets and were unable to adapt. They tried to be instinctual, but all those options were low percentage and poor, e.g. Doueihi's chip kick or Madden repeatedly running it on the last into no overlap situation.
Pole played as a 3rd prop only. That's a selection issue. We've seen a successful structure of Hastings at lock with effectively two 5/8ths outside him in the last month. This has been combined with increased second phase with offloads up. Yesterday, rather than put a like for like into lock, e.g. Nu Brown or even Peachy, they tried to play the new style, but they selected a heavy middle rotation. Boneheads.
Dias selected on the bench played zero minutes. Peachey's service from DH was terrible and he was often late to the ruck. Passes weren't crisp and execution was nowhere.
The team selections were unbalanced and did not fit the game plan.
Add to that the lacklustre energy in the first half and it would've been a miracle if we'd pulled that out of the fire.
With no Hastings there was no holding of the middle or straightening the attack on backline plays. This led us to just going side to side, which ran us out of space. Add to that Newcastle played very up and in, which we tried to counter by running deeper, but the only player straightening and digging into the line on the sweep, of all players, was a 27-old reserves player and debutant in Freebairn, whose service was ok, especially considering no-one else was doing it.
Jock and Doueihi came up with repeated bad choices at the end of sets and were unable to adapt. They tried to be instinctual, but all those options were low percentage and poor, e.g. Doueihi's chip kick or Madden repeatedly running it on the last into no overlap situation.
Pole played as a 3rd prop only. That's a selection issue. We've seen a successful structure of Hastings at lock with effectively two 5/8ths outside him in the last month. This has been combined with increased second phase with offloads up. Yesterday, rather than put a like for like into lock, e.g. Nu Brown or even Peachy, they tried to play the new style, but they selected a heavy middle rotation. Boneheads.
Dias selected on the bench played zero minutes. Peachey's service from DH was terrible and he was often late to the ruck. Passes weren't crisp and execution was nowhere.
The team selections were unbalanced and did not fit the game plan.
Add to that the lacklustre energy in the first half and it would've been a miracle if we'd pulled that out of the fire.
