DJDL
Bench
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- 4,587
I've spoken about this before, but I really question our decision making and leadership.
Two things last night, IMHO, turned the game on it's head.
Ask yourself this:
Number 1.
You're a leader of your team. You are absolutely caning the opposition in defence, and look well on the way to springing an upset. But you've conceded a try on the back of a questionable refereeing decision and now trail by 2 with 30 minutes left to play.
You have your troops behind the posts as the opposition line up the conversion. What would you be saying? Would you be telling them to get it out of their heads? The decision has been made, live with it. We're all over them. Kick deep into their territory and let's bash the merkins again. We'll get plenty more opportunity. It's only 2 points behind and not time for panic stations.
Or do you speak of going for the low-percentage play. The short kick off.
Yep, let's try that. Concede a penalty in the process. Then a second try and all off a sudden we're 8 behind, kicking back to them and, next thing you know, we haven't seen the ball for 10 minutes.
Number 2.
This happened earlier, but I believe the first to be the bigger error in judgement and to have had the greater impact on the result.
It's 2 minutes to half time. You're up by 8 points, inside the opposition 40 on the last. You've got numbers to the left and head that way. You engage the line and look to be poking your head through. Do you go yourself, and hope to pop an offload to the player on your left shoulder? Or do you throw what is clearly never going to be anything but an intercept?
Or do you just play the percentages, rolling it down into the corner and make the opposition work it off their line like you have for the past 38 minutes?
We all know how that ended.
Seriously, our decision making at crucial times is nothing short of diabolical and it comes from our leaders time and time again.
Ice those two decisions and we are still in the hunt. But, as we saw, they pretty much ended our night.
Honestly, I'm so far off Wade Graham it's not funny.
Two things last night, IMHO, turned the game on it's head.
Ask yourself this:
Number 1.
You're a leader of your team. You are absolutely caning the opposition in defence, and look well on the way to springing an upset. But you've conceded a try on the back of a questionable refereeing decision and now trail by 2 with 30 minutes left to play.
You have your troops behind the posts as the opposition line up the conversion. What would you be saying? Would you be telling them to get it out of their heads? The decision has been made, live with it. We're all over them. Kick deep into their territory and let's bash the merkins again. We'll get plenty more opportunity. It's only 2 points behind and not time for panic stations.
Or do you speak of going for the low-percentage play. The short kick off.
Yep, let's try that. Concede a penalty in the process. Then a second try and all off a sudden we're 8 behind, kicking back to them and, next thing you know, we haven't seen the ball for 10 minutes.
Number 2.
This happened earlier, but I believe the first to be the bigger error in judgement and to have had the greater impact on the result.
It's 2 minutes to half time. You're up by 8 points, inside the opposition 40 on the last. You've got numbers to the left and head that way. You engage the line and look to be poking your head through. Do you go yourself, and hope to pop an offload to the player on your left shoulder? Or do you throw what is clearly never going to be anything but an intercept?
Or do you just play the percentages, rolling it down into the corner and make the opposition work it off their line like you have for the past 38 minutes?
We all know how that ended.
Seriously, our decision making at crucial times is nothing short of diabolical and it comes from our leaders time and time again.
Ice those two decisions and we are still in the hunt. But, as we saw, they pretty much ended our night.
Honestly, I'm so far off Wade Graham it's not funny.