I know this is hindsight but wighton should of been the 6 all series. He won the dally M ffs pick him in his spot. Cody had his moments and Keary is a great player but Wighton should've been there.
That was such a bad series, I really liked Freddy as a coach but he got found wanting this year. The players deserve a lot of criticism as they played two games like it didnt mean anything to them but overall freddy didnt pick the right team. We got lucky in game 2 that we didnt get any injuries in the whole back lline, the only cover we had for any injury 1-7 was Yeo into the centres. He just spent the entire season at lock and he is the back plan on case of an injury in 7 positions. And personally I think Freddy should've paid more attention to form. Guys like Jake Turbo and Frizzel tried their guts out but they just had very little impact. Yeo shouldve been the 13 especially with Nath at 7. Crichton should have been the first back rower picked for NSW I know he started the second two games but he was obviously the best backrower nsw had available. Gutho and Wighton in the centres was a mistake. Gutho is not good enough to play out of position. Crihton or lomax shouldve of played. QLD beat us with Sami and Coates on the wings but we are scared to play talented guys like Lomax and Crichton.
Spot on. I think Fittler was spooked when he knew Bennett would be coach and tried to get too clever. What did Bennett do? Just focused on making sure his team were good, old fashioned Origin tough. They were highly motivated and ready to die for the cause. NSW didn't lose because of Qld attacking genius. They lost because of a lack of ticker in the forwards.
Payne Haas run for 35m for NSW as a starting prop in game 3. At half time, Bennett would have got inn Haas's ear and made sure he went back out and lived up to his physical prowess. "You are built like Tarzan, play like him". Instead, he played like Jane. You need to be the right kind of Warrior to be an SOO forward, we didn't have enough of them in the forwards to get the job done. We really needed some mongrel out there and RCG and Klemmer would both have been better choices than Haas. RCG has many faults, but he always rips in and tries his guts out.
On the plus side, Bennett showed us that Capewell is a quality player and we should seriously consider moving Yeo to the front row and putting him at lock. His aggression and speed. would be most welcome and Yeo will just continue to be brilliant wherever he plays. Yeo, JFH, Kikau, capewell, Martin. That is a brilliant pack, provided Cleary can sort out how to use Kikau effectively (not too many minutes).
