Round 13 vs Raiders
Aekins 7
Mansour 7
Crichton 7
May 7
Naden 7
Luai 9
Cleary 9
Tamou 8
Koroisau 8
Fisher-Harris 9
Kikau 7
Martin 7
Yeo 8
Leniu 7
Leota 9
Tetevano 7
Laurie 6
This was a really tough game, Canberra came to play hard and fast and started furiously. But this Panther's team is made of stern stuff and in spite of not having the ball for the first six minutes, weathered the onslaught and didn't flinch. Once again the forwards out shone a highly rated pack that many consider to be one of the best in the competition. A couple of points:
- I just can't praise our forwards highly enough. Canberra could just not get going without help from the ref. Canberra had only two forwards who run for 100m plus, Papali and Lui. The Panthers had 5 and Tetavano run for 99m!;
- The interchange puzzle continues with Leniu only given 14 minutes. With the forwards involved in heavy clashes in the second half it made sense to leave Leniu on much longer. When he is on he consistently delivers 9m or 10m runs. The forward pack is purring along nicely, let's not burn it out;
- I am always puzzled how a team can lead 24 nil at half time, clearly dominating the game and yet still lose the penalty count. Ivan was right to query the penalties, in spite of what Annersley said about the calls being correct. There would be hundreds of tackles in a game where a tackled players arm touches the floor in a wrestle and they continue to try and improve their position and a second player joins the tackle to stop them advancing. The ref eventually calls held and play continues, nothing to see here. To penalise Martin because Rapana's arm touched the floor is ridiculous and is an example of where the ref's don't have a feel for the game. Martin couldn't possibly know Rapana's arm had touched the ground, he just saw him trying to turn his body to pass the ball and the tackle was still moving. Technically correct? Yes. The right decision? No. That said, Ivan should not have said what he did.
The criticism of Aekins has got out of hand, painting him as a third rate loser. Yet there he is, doing his job delivering 133m per game, the 10th best in the NRL, a whole 4m a game behind Dylan Edwards. He is equal first in the NRL for kick return metres per game at 63m. He is equal 5th for taking 1 person hit ups, so he doesn't mind doing the tough stuff and getting bashed.
His effective tackle percentage has him sat above the likes of Ponga, Tedesco, garrick. DWZ and Dufty. In 8 games he has made 4 errors. Trbojevic, Holmes and Moylan have made more errors in fewer games. He has let in 4 tries and above him are many players including Trbojevic, Holmes and Hopoate that have let in the same or more tries with fewer games.
Is he a brilliant attacker? No and he doesn't rate well compared to other fullbacks when it comes to involvement in tries. He is a good offloader (9th in the NRL), but he seems to spend his time distributing the ball as part of a chain of passes. This is borne out by the number of possessions he gets per game which puts him at 10th in the NRL. This obviously frustrates people because he isn't creating anything. Mind you, he doesn't have to. The rest of the team are creating plenty and he just needs to give the ball to players who are better at it than he is. Job done. For all we know he has been instructed to shovel the ball out to the other players.
I wish he was Tedesco like in attack, but he isn't, but he is a better all round player than many other fullbacks in first grade. Most importantly,in our team what he brings to the table is effective in helping us win. He locks up the back, gives us plenty of metres to help start our sets and the other backs deliver the tries.
heart:
)
