Maloney's going good mate. Happy with him. Seymour is organising well for the most part I feel as well. I feel this is why there was such interest in Feleti Mateo, someone who can create opportunities through ball skill. A lot of our tries comes off one off aggression by a guy like Vatuvei steam rolling his opponent, or a well placed kick (bomb or grubber). You are quite right, if there was a great instinctive half in say a Prince or a Thurston then it'd be a tough night at the office for our opponents. Such is life. We have a great talent in the NYC by the name of Shaun Johnson, who will be groomed next year in the Vulcans for a long term shot at halfback.
For the record, the turning point for me was the analus horribilis piece of refereeing by Gavin 'I'll gag on it if you want Johnny C' Badger when he penalised Rapira for being offside at marker, when he was clearly on side. A turnover just on halfway compared to defending from 25-30m out with a fresh set, had a massive impact on the flow of the game in terms of whom had the ball for the next 10-15 minutes. I would say Gavin made a guess, because there's no way he could have clearly observed that player and thought he was offside. Nevertheless, such is life, and this is football, and what happened beyond that (poor goal line D and errors in our own half) are sins we have largely not been committing these past 2 months. I don't really want to get into the habit of criticising Badger, I have a lot of respect for the bloke for one reason... most weekends he's the only referee still wearing the Sonny Fai band. Respect for that.
We were overawed by the occasion I suspect. I look at a guy like Ben Matulino... he barely seemed to make errors throughout the season, last night it looked like he had jelly for hands. Defensively he barely seems to miss, and usually in actual fact he gets dominant tackles. He got blitzed by Zillman. When a back runs in Matulino's channel generally they should be warned they're in a for a world of hurt, but he was off his game. I can't recall us dropping any kick returns this year. Last night we put down two. Manu Vatuvei had a great game going forward, but he panicked on a couple of offloads turning over possession twice in our half when his run had given us some momentum for that set. Ukuma Ta'ai's footwork defensively is usually very good, last night he did a lot of jersey grabbing as he lunged out of the line looking to overplay his hand to make an impact. It wasn't a matter of no effort, it was just I feel at times they were overawed and trying to overplay their way out of it. It'll be a very good learning curve for those players. IMO, if we get another chance, we'll be a lot better for the run. The mistakes we were making are not familiar mistakes for us in 2010.
If this is the end for us this year, I'm very proud of what we achieved. We were one of the favourites for wooden spoon. We had an enormous list of injuries (key ones at that). Yet here we are, with somewhat of a chance to get into week 2 of the finals. We are club champions, and we do have a good system developing good players for a good future.
Most of all, well played Gold Coast. Prince was too accurate. Friend was troublesome out of dummy half. Rogers is such a deceptive talent even at this stage of his career. And Zillman has always been an epic talent, hopefully he is now going to consistently deliver on his potential. They are well coached by a coach who is underrated. Good luck to Gold Coast for the remainder of the finals.
