Last night too many people read my comments about Tedesco as being completely defensive of him, and implying I was saying any criticisms of him were not valid. That is far from the truth. Did he play well? On the whole, no. He made a number of mistakes last night. My point about him not passing to Addo-Carr is that it was not the only bombed try in the first half due to not passing to unmarked support players. Both Frizzell and Crichton did the same things themselves in the first half, not passing to (respectively) Addo-Carr or To'o who were both unmarked and went themselves. Hence the focus from many was just on that one incident, but ignoring the other two, which was just plain silly. All 3 were bonehead decisions.
Tedesco is still playing the same game he has over the last 4-5 years. Problem is that with age he has lost half a step, and also the opposition has cottoned on to what he does. He has not added any new facets to his game, which overall hurts him. Also, yes his form has been down this season. I have not disputed that at all.
Thing is has Tom Turbo been in great form this season either? Like Tedesco, take out his last game prior to the Origin 1 team being selected, and the answer is no. He has been a lot less effective. Both got picked because of past performance in Origin, and off the back of a good individual game the week of selection.
NSW had a number of problems last night. One of them was a lack of effort. I suspect Tedesco was running the ball that much as he was trying to lead by example, as many of the forwards didn't seem to do a lot of work with ball in hand. Also whilst I respect Nathan Cleary as a player, he all but ceased running the ball in the second half. If he wanted the ball he should have demanded it. Fact he didn't is either due to (a) Him not willing to overcall his captain; (b) The coach not backing him; or a combination of both.
There is a lot of blame to go around out of last night's game for NSW. In fact of the 4 spine players last night, the only one who I thought played anywhere near to a better game was Api. The other three either were too passive, or overplayed their hand too much.