I dont understand the crazy perception on this game. We've played 2 bad games all year.
Souths have conceded in the last 4 weeks more points than we conceded in the first 10.
It amazes me that we are strong outsiders with the betting agencies. Even Daley on the Matty Johns Show who gives the tab odds said it should be the other way around.
We've only started 2 games this season prior to this as outsiders - Storm and Canberra - and we won both.
Irrelevant. We played a Storm that was down on troupes(especially Harry) on a wet track which suits us the slower team. And as for Canberra, no one was to know at the time how they were imploding from within and how bad they were going to be.
The problem is that we keep losing way more then we win against teams that aim up against us that have a decent roster. We don't seem to know how to score points in the good ball side of the field when a team is defending well.
Until that changes on a regular basis, most of the public, analysts, and us fans, will always think we can be beaten when we play a strongly in form team or a top 5-6 team.
I for one thought that we may have turned the corner on this, but after witnessing last week, we have not. It was one game, that repeated the cycle of so many others over the last 10+ years.
Like I said, until we start beating teams like Bunnies, Panthers, Roosters, Manly and Storm, when they are at full strength regularly, then the doubt and criticism will continue. The only way I can see us being consistently better then these sides, with the halves we have committed to is speed out wide. At least speed out wide changes things and makes a half chance a full chance. At the moment our half chances against these teams end up almost always 0 chances when the game is on the line.
Look at the brilliant Cowboys v Warriors game last night. All second half I kept screaming at the tele, they need to find a way to bring the Hammer into the game. For the entire 1st half he was basically unsighted and the same thing was happening in the second half. I couldn't believe that their playmakers were not working out ways to give him the ball with one on one opportunities. Hell he just wasn't getting the ball at all and the couple of times he did they were basically hitup like carries. That is not how you play a Ferrari. Then FINALLY, he moved to the wing and they put on the spread. Well as they say in the classics, game over man. He turned that miniscule half chance into game set and match, field goal pending.
Speed is your friend, unless you don't have any.
We really need someone like X. Savage in our backline to give us that type of X factor.