I thought the forward battle was fairly even and it was our little men around the ruck and our ball movement that really hurt them. Wallace made a number of incisive runs/half breaks behind the ruck that had them back peddling.
Grevs was below average in my opinion. Maybe it was me (I am going to watch a recording of the game tonight) but he seemed to miss alot of tackles? And I barely saw Akauola and Lats the entire game. I think Akauola should get a little more game time.
Matagi's first hit up set the scene. He was over the advantage line on basically every run. Grevsmuhl wasn't getting bent back either. Merrin stepped the first bloke and pushed through constantly. Wallace was able to run in behind the ruck from almost the very first set off our forward's play the balls.
The only point they really had us on the backfoot wasn't the fault of our forwards. In the first half there was a spell where Cartwright gave away two penalties, Wallace I think one, Cleary kicked it dead and Moylan seemed to get afraid of the ball, letting one bounce past him and getting carried back, dropping one and letting two bounce. On the back of that they were able to muscle up on our backs rucking it out, but even then I don't think we had to kick from inside the 30 all game, bettering the 40 most times and occasionally winning penalties in the ruck.
When Matagi came on in the second half, I think about the 60th minute, he hit the line well in our own half and carried them for like another 15m. On the back of that Latu made massive meters behind the ruck and had a marker less play the ball in their half. Wallace scoots off that behind the ruck, desperate tackle, offload back to Latu, we spread the ball, Peachey try. The dogs had no answer to that. Kasiano was a handful but that's expected, he's class and their only hope, Graham and Tolman had nothing to trouble us, just hit up and put down.
