Yeah, but aside from the dropped pill, which both teams suffered from, why do you think we were continuously in your half of the field?
Well it obviously wasn't from your forwards making more metres than ours so it must have been the dropped ball and penalties.
What else could it have been?
Mannah was very good, as was Algood, but that is really where the buck stops as far as the Eels forwards go.
And out of your forwards Corey Parker was the only one who stood out.
We have a more balanced pack, allowing all of the forwards to share the load.
You have better edge forwards with more depth, which is why you were able to move Thaiday to the front-row and still carry Gillett on the bench.
But your forwards hardly dominated. Didn't you see the first half? In the end you won through better ball control and more attacking options. Not from winning the forwards battle.
iYou can't measure performance on runs only, defense counts for something as well
Ok but do you understand the amount of metres one team makes on their runs directly reflects on the other team's defence?
but in a game where both teams had 50% possession, these are the stats for the forwards only:
Brisbane had 95 runs for 666 meters, against the Eels 77 runs for 524 meters.
http://live.nrlstats.com/matches/nrl/match12958.html
NRL Stats says different:
Eels: 89 runs for 695m
Broncos: 89 runs for 625m
We made more metres overall and more metres per run, as one would expect having better front-rowers.
We had 7 offloads against Eels 0
NRL Stats says 13 offloads to 2.
0 ineffective tackles against 15
NRL Stats says 2 to 19.
9 missed tackles against 23
Actually 15 against 37.
17 tackle breaks against 5.
38 to 15.
If that doesn't reflect domination, I don't know what will...
Computer says no.
Those stats you've quoted sure do reflect domination but they are team stats - so they include backs such as Hoffman, Reed and Hodges, who blew out your tackle break stats (backs always have the most tackle breaks - a few years ago Matt Bowen set the record for most tackle breaks in a season so it's a pretty useless stat for measuring forward dominance). Hodges alone got 6 of your team's 13 offloads. That's nearly half if you weren't sure.
Nobody's denying the Broncos were far too good on the night, as you'd expect - the Broncos already have the strongest roster every year, plus last night they were up against a team missing two of their best players.
But the Broncos were pretty average in the forwards, which is why they used their big strong backs so much. You probably think your forwards dominated because that's what you were hoping to see, and therefore only remember the individual tackles/runs where they did - we call that 'confirmation bias'.
But the stats represent moments in the match, and they show that the Eels forwards had more strong moments than the Broncos forwards, even though there would have been accasions over the 80 minutes where the Broncos forwards got it over the Eels forwards.
But overall, as a forwards battle, the Eels won last night. It was our backs that let us down, or more to the point, your backs played so well that ours really had nothing.
