I know it was only one game but there were some pretty concerning elements of last night which need to be remedied if we want to win this comp. Ordered from what I'd consider most to least important.
Yeo was really... un-Yeo like. He still made some trademark runs but he looked flustered and rushed. Hes very clearly the soul of the team and you could feel the rest of the team mirroring his energy. Mistakes, missed tackles. Its not his first such game this year either. By far the biggest concern.
Weve played loose so far this year. Quick passes, offloads, running it on the last. Lots of risk. Its looked amazing but I think we saw why that hasn't been a feature of our game regularly. It looks great when the opposition lets it happen but when you have less space and/or the passes don't stick it looks terrible. We looked like the Storm often have against us in recent years. Yes we were (technically) chasing the game but Pantherball has been this decade's gold standard for a reason and I hope we have a bit more faith in it to get us out of tough situations.
Nath was extremely poor. He put one outstanding kick in the first half. From our 40, hit the grass, turned Tracey around completely, had him playing the ball 5 meters out, our defensive line surging forward and the whole Dogs pack lumbering back. Contrast that to his end of sets in the second half when the game was still very close. Little dinks behind the line. Running it on the last. Midfield bombs coming down on the 30. What do you know, the Dogs middle came home far stronger and their edges had the space to out us to bed. Its not that complicated a game. No idea why we went away from what has worked unbelievably consistently for the past 6 years. He played like a kid in his 20th game.
Talagi was really poor. I'm not on any hate train. I still really like the kid and overall his defense has been ok, but I think he and Casey will continue to be the weakness in our line that gets exploited when our middle falls apart and opposition backlines get space. Their failures are really a symptom of other problems though.
Phillips looked out of his depth physically. There's obviously a player there, and he's looked great when we we've skiing downhill this year. But he was dominated a few times in a way a NRL middle really shouldn't be. Needs another year to fill out before he's a consisistent option. Not sure where Henry's at but I think we want a bit more from those minutes.
Good news is a performance like that has come at 5-0 so we have space to fix things that we didn't have when we played poorly last year.
