They won’t stick with Nicho. Media has him cooked. Some commentators had him gone after 5 minutes, you can’t get more premeditated than that.
His general kicking wasn’t the main issue. Just his attacking kicks/cross kicks. Never high enough / don’t allow enough time for the chasers. He nearly always looks rushed / guides his kick rather than launching it.
The game plan also looked shit, bash barge and a lot of flat passes, support players jamming ball players. Rarely stood deep and looked to attack the edges which was disappointing.
I remember only one time where Nicho and Luai combined to swing the ball left and looked decent doing it mid way through the second half.
But most of this probably resulted due to the send off.
Madge really didn’t adjust well to the send off with the right edge defense. Martin - Hynes - Lomax - what a recipe for disaster. Martin is a line shooter not a lateral mover, Hynes is not comfortable defending in the centres and Lomax prefers to hang back instead of Jam.
One try was dead set comical with Martin barely moving across Hynes pushing up and Lomax 15m behind as if this wouldn’t be bad enough if not numerically disadvantaged.
Really poor coaching not to employ either an intentional aggressive umbrella jam on the edge (even risking the offside pen) and turn QLD back inside or all slide passively and use the sideline as much as you can.
Did neither and paid the price heavily
Biggest issue though is NSW play like individuals.
Tedesco the biggest example of this. Because of this, they will 9/10 lose even against less talented QLD squads which we have seen recently
Heightened pressure on everyone that gets selected to stay there increases the erratic play style.
End of the day, they all pocket 30k. Job done.
