Here’s my match report for Round 1, 2024 against Manly. It's a big one!
Overview
I still maintain what I said in my initial reaction after the game, that we actually played really well for about 50 minutes and honestly, after watching the game a second time, I think that we were overall the better team throughout that period. Of course, there was times Manly would look good and get a bit of momentum, but I just think for the most part, we were the better side. After absorbing the really good opening two sets from Manly, the boys really stuck to it and dialed in. It looked pretty good. Not perfect of course, but it was pretty good. We only trailed for about 10 minutes of this period, the rest we either lead or broke even with the Sea Eagles.
Of course, that all fell apart in the last half an hour and from there it was a complete collapse. We went from doing very well to looking absolutely diabolical, pretty much in like three sets. A complete and utter capitulation of spectacular proportion which was simply not acceptable and honestly, the boys should be embarrassed by it.
This is what makes this opening game of the Season all the more disappointing for me, the fact that we were looking pretty good and if we just kept that up for 80 minutes, we probably win and everyone is saying “wow, Souths are looking good.” It was extremely disappointing.
Attack
I don’t really have any problem with our attack overall. In fact, it looked pretty good apart from one period of the game there. Upon second watch, I think our forwards did pretty well in terms of yardage for the opening 50 minutes. There weren’t many sets in that part of the game where we didn’t make good meters which was great! In fact, there was several sets where the boys just poured down field and looked hard for Manly to contain. So, yea, no massive issues with our yardage game for the most part. Throughout this period, we also only made a small number of errors. We were completing well and getting to the end of our sets quite nicely.
We scored five tries in the game, so you can’t really criticise our offense too much. Five tries in any NRL game is very good and should normally be enough to win you the game. The tries were all fantastic and they were all scored in different ways. It was really good to watch and we actually looked potent at times. Certainly more crisp than at times in 2023. This is why I was so pumped after AJ’s try because I was really thinking “we’re on here, we’re back.” But it wasn’t to be.
Our defence was the biggest area that turned to shit with half an hour or so to go, but our attack also completely died with it. I know this is down to fatigue but we just didn’t look like doing anything. Once again, a lot of uninspired one-out running that really, got us nowhere. No one really tried to play catch-up Footy or take some risks. No one really tried to do anything. We looked stuck in a ‘process’ but the process simply wasn’t working. Lots of silly errors crept in, we showed a complete lack of respect for the ball, and it honestly felt like the boys just couldn’t complete a set at all out there. It’s extremely worrying because all of this stuff which plagued us last year. It’s nearly the exact same things. It was just so disappointing.
Defence
Watching live, I really didn’t think about how much of a mixed bag our defence was because all the good stuff was overshadowed by our poor last half an hour of Footy. Upon watching the game again, I have realised that there certainly was a lot of good stuff to our defence before they fell away.
I’ll start with the good stuff. For mine, coming out of Round 1, I have no issue with our actual defensive structure defending the line, at least not in this game. By this I mean when defending our line, Manly didn’t actually beat us with a really good set move, our get around us with a really well executed play or anything like that. They threw a lot of set plays at us, but we defended most of them and turned them away. I believe Manly’s tries were all individual errors in defence (which I’ll get to shortly), rather than a break down in our defensive structure. I’m not trying to say our D was good in that last 30 minutes, far from it. I mean, we concede 24 points in that period, which is just unacceptable, I’m just trying to point out that it wasn’t due to an actual breakdown of our defensive structure which is a little bit of a constellation.
I was happy with our goal line defence for the first 50 minutes. Really happy. Honestly, Manly threw so friggin much at us during this part of the game, but we turned them away on many occasions. Some cracking try savers from guys and our scramble was particularly impressive. The boys were certainly turning up for each other. The defensive highlight was not conceding off that Saab break where Lachy made the ankle tap. The effort to turn them away there was amazing. There was a couple of other occasions where we showed real effort and desire to get back and stop them. It was awesome and I thought the boys were showing that we were a different beast in terms of defence this year. We conceded one legit try and one try off an intercept which is our own doing.
That’s why I’m so angry and disappointed to just completely fall apart like we did. How the hell do you go from defending pretty well to completely crumbling like we did and giving up almost a point a minute?? It’s a lack of resilience and a lack of mental toughness in my opinion. It’s like they all just thought we had the game tied up when we went up 20-12 and they coasted. You can’t do that at NRL level, and I thought the boys would’ve learnt that from last year. Honestly, from the moment Davvy dropped that ball, the defence was complete paper towel stuff. All of Manly’s tries were really soft and looked way too easy. They were all tries that at this level, should not be happening consistently. As I mentioned earlier, apart from manybe Garrick’s, all the tries we conceded were down to individual defensive lapses. A lack of physicality, a poor read, a poor effort, whatever, a lot of them should’ve been stopped but the boys were just extremely poor. It’s alarming because we talked all Pre-Season about defence, but this period of the game looked like 2023 all over again. It was the same issues as last year and once again, we ended up conceding over 30 points. It’s a real worry and not a good sign at all.
Even when we were defending better, I still wasn’t 100% happy with our general play defence. I thought the line speed wasn’t very good and we struggled to trap Manly down their end with a good defensive set. The kick chase was also found wanting more often than not. These are big areas of improvement.
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