My key observations:
- We definitely out-enthused them, we were out to make a statement, Sharks were not up to it
- Finally the guys implemented much of what we asked for, Merrin was well-supported every time he ran, and it created most of our opportunities & we mixed things up to keep the opposition guessing
- Forward Passes was the whacky one, some of them were quite flat and really unlucky, some of them were more obvious, definitely the offloads were touch and go everytime... somethign we want to work on, but I think the refs were a bit eager, they let some of the Sharks ones go.
- The Sharks really didnt captilise on the ball we kept handing them due to above forward passes, but credit to our defence and eagerness.
- Soward.. still not running at the line like hes meant to, but atleast he made some runs from broken play, they are very opportunistic situations he finds himself in
- Nightingale: WTF Flo back to his ridiculous ways, 2 tries where he had no right, and basically won us the game.
- King is still spending time finding the pace of the game, error rate is quite high, I cant help but wonder if he needs to do 80 minutes instead of coming on mid-game, not sure how we will do that, and not sure how bad his injury was either, hopefully nothing too serious.
- Price's post-match interview, sweet jeebus Pricey can you give atleast some insight into your strategy, and not the mind-numbing cliche spiel we get each week. Clearly they went out with a different attacking strategy this week, but ofcourse he blocks the question with some waffle, he did the same thign last year when we had that 2 week period where we threw the ball around.
Moving forward:
- Most importantly were trying stuff, thats all we ask for, I can handle being beaten if we threw too many offloads, than being beaten playing boring football
- I dont know what to do with Soward & Fein, 1 of them is needed, we just cant throw 2 rookies in at once, Fein is playing the Hornby role of 2012, safe and steady and will get smashed if he needs too, Soward isnt doing enough imo as a ball runner, but his kicking in crunch situations is something we are very reliant on.. if only you could combine both sets of skills into 1 player and free up an opportunity for a genuine ball-runner.
