After watching the replay, here's my full report,
Attack
Our completely incompetent performance from the whole team in terms of our attack. I thought Round 17 against the Cowboys would be as bad as it got but this is on par with that.
Firstly, let's start with the biggest issue which is obviously the errors. 15 we made. Yes, 15. That is just friggin ridiculous and completely unacceptable. it stinks of a poor attitude, complacency, laziness and a lack of focus. I understand there's always going to be errors in a game, but 15 of them is just quite simply disgusting. Schoolboy shit. A lot of these errors were unforced and coming out of our own end too. You're never going to defend well and win when you're constantly putting yourself under pressure like that. What I don't understand is how we can have a completion rate in the 90% range in a torrential wet game a few weeks back, but then in a perfectly dry game on the Sunshine Coast, we complete at 66%? I don't get it. The error rate was much the same in the first half, both teams were just as bad as each other but the Broncos were able to overcome that and hold the ball much better in the second half while we just continued to capitulate. Just disgraceful.
I thought once again, our actual game plan seemed pretty flawed. It was working okay in the first half, but once Brisbane started to get on top in the second stanza, we were way, way too conservative. Just constantly went one-out with hit ups which constantly resulted in us getting smashed because the Broncos were on top and putting in more effort. We didn't look like having anyone, or anything, to turn the tide and try to spark some momentum. There was no plan B, and this has been a criticism of many of us for a while now. Once a team gets on top of us, we can't turn it on our own. Once again, it was a big contributing factor in this result.
Our actual good-ball attack wasn't anything better to write home about either. Yea, we scored three pretty nice tries but that's it. Aside from that, it was awful. The boys looked like they'd never played together before as everything was very clunky. Mis-timed passes, passes hitting the deck, players missing their role on backline shifts etc. That's not to mention the friggin crash balls!!! They have their place, but we do it far too often and it just doesn't work. Really disappointing that we played 20 minutes of that game against twelve men, but only came up with one try in that time. Really disappointing. There's no excuse for this either as pretty much all our attacking guns were there apart from Latrell.
I really don't know what it was, but the boys were just so off with the ball.
Defence
Defence wasn't much better.
I thought we actually started the game pretty strongly defensively, turning away their first couple of raids and limiting their meters well. This mostly continued throughout the first half. We did concede a couple of tries, the first of which was really disappointing as we couldn't wrap up the ball in three different attempts, but apart from that, the first half defence was okay. They had a number of sets on our line and asked a fair few questions but the boys turned up for each other and mostly got the job done.
Going into halftime, I was hoping this would continue but we got the complete opposite in the second half. The physicality, resolve, resilience and focus just completely disappeared. You could see it in the little areas. There was no line speed whatsoever in that second half. Instead of showing some want, the boys would just take a couple of steps up, and then wait for the Broncos ball runner to hit them. This often resulted in a lot more meters not only before contact, but post contact too as they were able to generate more momentum than they should be in their carries. Look at the Broncos line speed in that second half. They were ruthless with it, and it turned the game. Our boys got completely bashed which contributed to the fatigue and thus, errors. But did we try to do that? Do we ever try to do that? No. We just be passive, and it was so frustrating on Friday night. barely trapped them in their own half the whole game because of it.
Of course, there were defensive issues on our left which I'll touch on when I do player by player, but the other part defensively that was really disappointing was our inability to wrap up the ball and prevent offloads. It cost us two tries in the end, that's a big area to focus on.
Discipline in defence was also really poor. When you look at the stats, our discipline wasn't as bad as Brisbane numerically, but it's where we gave away the penalties and six-again's that killed us. Constant piggy backs out of their end which you just can't do.
I've been saying this for weeks now but our defensive issues currently, are all attitude in my opinion. We know we have a good defensive side in there, we have proven that. We know our structures are there. But it's the attitude, application, and focus to our defence which has completely gone. We need to find it very, very quickly.
Player By Player
Taaffe: Not much to say about Taaffey at all really. Did provide a great pass to AJ for our first try, that was nice tempo and execution from him, but apart from that, he was pretty much ineffective. Despite his positional play being good, he got mostly monstered on his kick returns which instantly put our sets on the back foot. Didn't even really look to get involved in attack in a meaningful way for much of the game. It's disappointing after the way he played against the Dogs.
Johnston: AJ was pretty good. Certainly, one of our better players I reckon. Talking about his defence first, it was relatively solid out there on the left for him personally. In the first half alone, he made a few crucial one-on-one tackles that could have ended up anything if he didn't make it. Came up with that pretty remarkable try-saver on Walsh early on in the second half too to really save our asses. The only mistake he really made in defence was on the Cobbo try. That was largely his fault. He was forced to make a decision, and unfortunately rushed in on the wrong man. As Walsh saw him move, it was game over on that try. Aside from his solid defence, I thought AJ was pretty good with the ball too. His try was fantastic!! One of the better ones he's scored this year. he got the ball with a bit of space but still had Staggs and Cobbo in a position to stop him. However, a brilliant bit of footwork sorted that out and AJ was in to go outright third on the all-time try scorer's list. Awesome try. There was a number of times in the first half he received great ball and got an overlap which he did his best with, but I'd like to see him just pin the ears back like he used to instead of looking to step in all the time. His carries were alright, and he made no errors which was good to see. It was a solid performance from AJ.
Tass: Not the greatest of nights for Tassy. His try was very nice, and he came up with that huge shot on Mam that could just earn tackle of the week, but he didn't do a lot else right. ran for 102 meters statistically but I thought a lot of his carries were actually pretty soft. He wasn't really running hard I noticed, he'd sort of go half pace and try to put on some footwork. Would much rather see him just go hard because that running style barely worked on Friday night. The space between Tassy and Cody was probably our biggest defensive issue of the night too. On the Broncos first try, the ball comes out to Staggs after a few offloads and Tassy initially makes a great read and rushes up on Staggs. However, he doesn't commit to going at him for some reason. he hesitates, pulls up and then tracks back a bit. This was all the space Staggs needed to score. I feel like Tassy could have shut that down if he committed. On the next Broncos try to Cobbo, Tass actually does a pretty decent job to start sliding across as the ball gets to Cobbo. He sprints over and puts himself in a position to at least throw his body at Cobbo and at least make a desperate attempt to stop him. But, disappointingly, he didn't. Isaiah kind of pulled up and brushed his back. It almost looked like he let him through. Again, it's Tass with a bit of a defensive error that leads to the Walsh try in the second half. I think Cody gets caught up in an obstruction on that play, which is shit, but Tassy again was still too passive as he backed back, and Walsh took that space. The night went from bad to worse as Kotoni Staggs scored once again, and once again, he stepped straight past Tassy. Not good from Tass, needs to get his defence sorted as we know it can be solid.
Graham: Not a bad return game for him personally. It wasn't perfect, he did make two errors, however one of them was Keaon's fault. Aside from that, he was pretty good. Awesome defence as he made 15 tackles with just the 1 miss, and nothing really got past him down our right edge. His carries were huge, inspirational coming out of our own end. he actually ran for the equal most meters of anyone in our side with 130. His try was great too. A bit of vision to identify the space and duck inside Cooky, and then just sheer determination to run over two defenders and score. I wish more of our guys out there the other night had his attitude.
Milne: You can't really fault him. He didn't do anything special, but he certainly didn't put a foot wrong either. No handling errors, no defensive errors and his carries were strong. 12 runs for 113 meters for him. Took a couple of tough bomb catches too.
