Congratulations Manly, far too good for us last night - was at the game, and it was highly disappointing ... comfortably our worst performance of the season, and comfortably your most consistent 80 minutes of footy.
Even with all our players out (ignoring the season-long injuries, we had Weyman, J Smith, Saffy, Nightingale, Scott out last night and Costigan went down early in the 2nd half), I thought our defence was pretty solid apart from a couple of bad reads by Brett Morris, who was clearly very jaded after the previous night's Test match. I feel that Manly probably would have scored 40 or 50 against most other sides last night, as you guys were pretty much camped inside our 30m zone for 70% of the match.
You guys only have 1 player left to come into your team (Rose), as D Williams won't be selected ahead of T Williams/Robertson/Farrar on current form, and Stewart is out all year, whilst we have 6 to come back (including 1 incumbent Aus rep, 2 incumbent NZ reps, and 1 incumbent QLD rep).
It's hard to take too much out of last night's game given all the circumstances ... everything else we already knew:
1) Manly will make the top 4.
2) St George will make the top 4.
After that, who knows!
Looking forward to the re-match later in the season, hopefully both sides can be at full-strength!
Congratulations again on a fine win.