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He's impossible to defend. Not only his performances, I get that he's not the 8th immortal but his attitude sucks big time.
and Anasta, Carney, Keary etc . He's always had a way above average 5/8
Go forward isn't an issue, Klemmer averaged over 170m per game and D Saifiti averaged 145m, yes there were some games the pack didn't stand up but the issue is in 3 facets which all relate to Pearce, firstly structure and attacking continuity, we're such a predictable team and coaches need to take your responsibility for that but also Pearce has never been good at playing what's in front of him, 90% of the time it's all premeditated, I mean hitting Lachy Fitzgibbon 15 times a game on a short ball fools no one, secondly kicking game, our kicking game in particular short/attacking kicks is worse than most park footy sides. Most teams use grubbers short kicks to either score tries or build pressure through repeat sets, for us it's a chance to either hand over possession very cheaply or more often than not give them a leg up with a 7 tackle set, the high kicks were also terrible, most teams put up torpedo bombs that pressure the opposition back 3, Pearce puts up nothing uncontested end over end kicks that don't even have enough height to allow chasers to contest or put the fullback/wingers under pressure, all those kicks do is hand over possession cheaply and allow the back 3 to make 20-30m off the kick return. Our kicking game was so bad at some stages that a lot of us agreed we'd be better off just just not kicking at all if we were in the opposition 20m zone. The final and perhaps biggest issue is leadership and lack thereof, there were many games where we needed a leader to stand up and on the rare occasion when it did happen it was never Pearce who stood up but there were plenty of times where Pearce went missing as a leader and captain.
The issue is no one actually watches our games closely with a focus on Pearce. If they watch our games they focus on Ponga and if he hasn't scored 3 tries and set up another 2 he's perceived to have had a poor game whilst Pearce misses 7 tackles, hits Fitzy on 10 telegraphed short balls, 10 aimless high kicks, 5 grubber kicks that go dead or straight into opposition legs and that's perceived as a good game somehow. In fact if you want to go even deeper into it I challenge people to actually pick out the games where Pearce has been amongst our best 3 players in that game. I can think of maybe 3 games at most.
I really think this is the case for most people. Unless we are playing their team or are playing on a friday or a sunday we are the easy game to skip. Anyone who told me they thought we'd win last week admitted later to not watching many of our games.
As per my original post ignore all the outside factors what strengths does he actually have? Not even talking results here but skillset, his skillset is below average pretty much across the board. If you were the scout Pearce objectively almost like a NFL draft prospect the scouting report wouldn't look pretty
or be able to tackle
I don’t know whether it’s a loss of confidence or he’s just past it but this was the most concerning thing about Pearce this season.
I honestly think it was all downhill after he injured himself in the Panthers game. For me he never seemed to fully recover from that.
I've heard Cronk say on a number of occasions when referring to advice for young halfbacks or ones out of form " get back to basics - get your defense right and kick the ball well and everything will come off the back of that" ......
Sterlo has a MASSIVE hard-on for Pearce. He named him in his top 5 halfbacks of the NRL era.
