mxlegend99
Referee
- Messages
- 23,296
Josh Mansour was our best for mine. Goddamn he destroyed them that second half. His passing game was better than I ever expected.
We know the answer to that. "footy for fun" wins the day and amen to that. We moved the ball, they belted it up the guts one out style. We run them off their feet and they were hanging on at the end. You can poke the Storm "strangle you to death" style of footy where the sun doesn't shine. It may win games but it is dreadful to watch.Now this gets to the heart of the matter. Their forwards are hard as nails, experienced campaigners who won't take a backwards step and that is what wins semis.
....I know Merrin, Cartwright, Wallace and Latimore won't be phased by the rough stuff, but lets see how the others respond. I suspect JFH will be fine, but you don't know until the shots start flying. The Titans got over the top of our forwards, lets hope they learned from that.
.....Their back row is nowhere near as skilled or as fast as ours and they don't have many ball players and off-loaders in their team besides Kasiano and Graham. We easily match that with Cartwright, Latu, Merrin and even Matagai. Jackson, Klemmer and Eastwood are head down, bum up type of forwards. This means their error rate is lower, but their creativity is low.
But...All our extra creativity will count for nothing if we can't get a roll on in the forwards because the Dogs are bashing us. If we can move the ball around to mess up their gang tackles and Cleary can find grass with his kicks (we don't want Morris to show us just how good he is at kick returns) we can wear them out. Use the Broncos game plan. Kick early, turn them round (Kasiano may be be big and tough, but he couldn't run out of sight on a dark night). Eastwood and Klemmer don't play big minutes (average 53 mins) so we just have to match them when they are on and when they leave the field we can move the ball more. Lets see how good William's lateral defence is.
...The old Dogs brute force and intimidation versus the young pups, ball playing, off-loading ad hoc style. Can the new "footy for fun' style stand up to the Dogs bash and barge?
That first half was ugly. But i swear we were just trying to tire the Bulldogs best we could for the second half.
It wasnt anything like we normally play. And i think it was our way of trying to keep the game going with few breaks for Bulldogs to get a breather
How many times did we kick on the 5th? Seemed like we ran it more often than not.
Awesome game. Goddamn out backline is fantastic.
Cartwright though... He must be close to our least consistent player. Does some great things but still has the mistakes. Let in dog's first try, messes up more kicks in play than he pulls off, and had that knock on. I like him but he needs to tighten it up. And put him in the back row officially already.
How many times did we kick on the 5th? Seemed like we ran it more often than not.
VPN for Singapore. Rugby Pass Setanta. Every game. Not expensive.Listening to Cleary on 2GB it sounded like the first half was a tactical effort to tire the Bulldogs out and then run over them in the second.
If this was the case it worked to perfection and Griffith proved he is a tactician as well as a developer!
Wish I was there! I cant even watch it due to the NRLs German rights holder. Unless you have a German address that matches your Credit card or bank account you can't subscribe! Same in the UK. The NRL needs to look at doing something for people travelling throughout the season!
The answer lies in the 20 minute period where we struggled to get out of our own half. We need a bit more toughness in the middle. He would have been of great help to us at that time.After watching this game I'm mystified as to why Penrith would sign Tamou from my team, the Cowboys.
I know he wanted to go back to Penrith for family reasons but he'll be shown up in that side made up of young fit quick enthusiastic players.
If anything he would fit better into the Bulldogs style of play which belongs in the 1980's -90's.
Griffin said in his press conference "there is no rule that say you have to kick on the fifth tackle". The Dogs didn't get a rest and their arses were dragging very close to the floor as the game went on. Sam looked like he could be off to ER for some oxygen. In the EPL they have a great chant for players they consider to be fat. "Who ate all the pies?" goes the chant. I am no inspector Morse, but I suspect Sam Kasiano could be number one suspect. Does he have an alibi?Great all round performance by the boys. The tactic of not kicking on the 5th was, while frustrating at the time, brilliantly thought out and executed. Kudos to the coaching staff for that.
Wanna give a big shoutout to Isaah Yeo. He has not put a foot wrong and has turnedinto a big key to our success. He just does the little unnoticed things so well.