Despite them posting their training camp videos all over social media they were completely gassed with 15 minutes left. We're also not going to win any games missing more than 50 tackles. Our defensive structure did look better for most of the game but you need to make your tackles. Faatape was running out of the line at times and that will need to be fixed. But with 15 to go, and fatigued, the defensive structure fell apart.
Our attack in the red zone was like a drunken game of twister. I'm hard pressed to understand what our game plan was. I'm not sure there was one aside from try and complete at a high percentage, which they didn't do.
For a change every 50/50 call went our way and we didn't get anyone sin-binned so we can't complain about that.
The only saving grace was that Newcastle were terrible. Anyone with half a brain could see their left side should have been testing out our right side all night long, but they hardly went that way.
Special call out to Terrell May who I thought was the best player from either team, Turuva, and Skelton. Royce Hunt was barely sighted when he was on the field and needs to lift his game. He's not getting paid to get in people's faces during a scrum, which is about the only memorable thing he did.
I still stand by that we won't see much improvement until the back end of the year so although it was disappointing it's not a disaster. Next week we get Bula and Api back and play Parra. I expect a bigger improvement and effort, and we should win that game.
