Drove three hours each way, booked a hotel and all.. same result as my last road trip. A shattering loss in the final five minutes.
On Ah Van and Solomona, showed nothing in Premier League. In fact, I'd go as far as to say Solomona touched the ball maybe twice all night. One was a bomb which he defused (luckily, because he looked horrible under it, and tapped it back and got lucky with a rebound bounce)... Ah Van, slippery footwork in that he couldn't keep his feet through most of the game, and was largely dominated. He needs to either put on a few pounds or try and find a bit more speed at this stage.
In fact, in the Premier League game (where the Lions were smashed, they were down 30- with 10 to go) the only players to really impress were Upu Poaching and Constantine Mika. When they came on, they made the world of difference and sparked the Lions attack. They broke through tackles, got away offloads. There were some other notable features, Scotty Jones has a very good tackle technique but hands like the ball is a cake of soap, Sonny Fai is a strong boy with good ball skills, but missed a couple of lazy tackles close to the line, one which led directly to their first or second try... Leeson Ah Mau is a good runner, but jersey grabbed a couple of times in D, and Lance Hohaia simply didn't get close to stepping up to the mark. From what I saw, the hype in Miguel Start is extremely over the top, he looked a slow, cumbersome Steve Matai look-a-like, certainly not the Steve Renouf clone he was touted by some as being. Louis Anderson was real tough on D, but he also made a couple of momentually foolish decisions with ball in hand to try million to one chance grubbers and a couple of dodgey passes. Aside from Mika and Poaching who were by far and away the best players, the final spark came from a chip and chase from Corey Lawrie, believe it or not. Looks a far better hooker than he is a lock.
All in all, the Lions were extremely disappointing, and a lot of those boys are a long long way off first grade material IMO. But, I think overall these inequities will change in the future for us with U20s and Premier League giving these guys the real step up in class they need. Michael Dobson and Marshall Chalk were all over the Lions all night, Dobson was far, far superior to Lance Hohaia and Steve Buckingham in every single way he controlled the play last night. Lance has a long way to go until he's even considered a first grade halfback, he's a hooker fo shore.
All in all, a visit to Canberra with much hope, left with much disappointment, and a lot of thoughts of what if, how false the promise seems to be and how much we will have to improve to be any serious threat in the finals. Very disappointing, any news on McKinnon? I sincerely hope he wasn't pulled because they underrated Canberra, Canberra at home are always a tough nut to crack, especially off the back of a hiding. I have more hope TBH for the Manly game, because I suspect the tails will be firmly between our legs. We need to work desperately on our 50/50 handles on the ground, to me there were a number of very costly errors... namely Logan's dropped pill at the ruck, Koopu similarly, Rapira twice unable to retain possession on the ground after showing good energy to get to the ball. I would go as far as to say if Koopu doesn't fumble in the ruck, Rapira tidies up that charge down, the game is a very much different result. But when it all mattered, the same as at the SFS, the Warriors could not come home strong when they needed to. Sad.
