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Rd14: 4pm Parra v Bulldogs GAME DAY THREAD @ Accor 9/6/25

Messages
13,504
Yeah, so just back home after the game - and a shower after mixing with the great unwashed masses of Bulldogs fans.... They're a poorly behaved and uneducated rabble, but that's another story.

Matterson disappeared from the game day team list, which was unexpected against one of the comp's strongest packs... Overall we competed or held our own for 65mins against the in-form ladder leaders, which was better than I expected.

One intercept try a piece to open the game - poor thinking from Smith/Lomax/Iongi from the scrum, with Burton surely offside? But then a great turnaround from Lomax and speedy Moses to get the points back. Penisini caught out marking no-one to let the Bulldogs second try in. Followed by nice work from Junior and Walker to even things up at halftime.

When we failed to score in the first 5mins of the second half with Kikau still off, you kind of knew how things would end. Canterbury were under pressure enough to take the 2 from a penalty, but then Penisini again moving too early and left in no man's land for Kikau's try. Missed conversion meant we were still alive, but then Mann broke through the poor defence of Hopgood and Papalii for the match winner, and then 5 Eels pathetically not wrapping up the ball for the offload that led to Galvin's icing on the cake.

I watched our first half defensive and attacking structures from behind the posts and was reasonably impressed with where we're headed now under Ryles in those departments. Penisini is the weakest link by a mile, followed by Hopgood and Tuilagi I reckon. Bulldogs too classy across the park and bench in the end.
 

King-Gutho94

Coach
Messages
17,534
Yeah, so just back home after the game - and a shower after mixing with the great unwashed masses of Bulldogs fans.... They're a poorly behaved and uneducated rabble, but that's another story.

Matterson disappeared from the game day team list, which was unexpected against one of the comp's strongest packs... Overall we competed or held our own for 65mins against the in-form ladder leaders, which was better than I expected.

One intercept try a piece to open the game - poor thinking from Smith/Lomax/Iongi from the scrum, with Burton surely offside? But then a great turnaround from Lomax and speedy Moses to get the points back. Penisini caught out marking no-one to let the Bulldogs second try in. Followed by nice work from Junior and Walker to even things up at halftime.

When we failed to score in the first 5mins of the second half with Kikau still off, you kind of knew how things would end. Canterbury were under pressure enough to take the 2 from a penalty, but then Penisini again moving too early and left in no man's land for Kikau's try. Missed conversion meant we were still alive, but then Mann broke through the poor defence of Hopgood and Papalii for the match winner, and then 5 Eels pathetically not wrapping up the ball for the offload that led to Galvin's icing on the cake.

I watched our first half defensive and attacking structures from behind the posts and was reasonably impressed with where we're headed now under Ryles in those departments. Penisini is the weakest link by a mile, followed by Hopgood and Tuilagi I reckon. Bulldogs too classy across the park and bench in the end.
Matto had the flu.

Woke up crook so pulled out.

If his not 100% matto won't play
 
Messages
13,504
Our young guys had tough games today

think Ryles will learn from this as well

you can’t expect to go to a clash with an elite forward pack with only two props
The bench composition was terrible - I could only assume it was because Ryles was left with no choice, due to another Matto decline on game day? If that was the case Ryles should've gone with Lussick rather than Papalii, as at least he could eat up some tackles in the middle against a ferocious pack, with an Origin rep playing from the bench.
 
Messages
13,504
2 weeks if he fights it..
Donald Trump Fight GIF by KarmaIQ

Though Laui ran into a ref yesterday but nothing...
Yeah, I actually think Brown gets off if he tries to fight it.

Ref stops in front of him, Brown's eyes are skyward and pushes ref away as if he's a blocking opposition player. All reasonable actions imo.
 

T.S Quint

Coach
Messages
15,323
Very disappointed in the loss today, but hard to fault the effort in the team.
They defended so well for such a long period of the game, but the problem was they just had to do too damn much of it. Some of it through their own mistakes, but also through some of the worst refereeing I’ve seen against our team in a while.

That was an absolutely disgraceful performance from Sutton. I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to get pinged for our indiscretions, but when the Dogs are allowed to do the exact same things (and sometimes worse) without penalty it’s unbelievably frustrating.

We had to have a lot go our way in this one to come out with a win, and unfortunately not much did. Once again the team we are opposing is somehow able to complete their sets at an incredibly high rate while we make error after error. We must not be putting enough pressure on in defence because teams seem to have completion rates of <80% against us consistently.

Having basically no forward pack cost us dearly in this. I thought Junior did great and Williams was pretty good, but apart from them our forwards were non-existent in attack. We had barely any field position (pretty much none in the second half) and didn’t really look like moving up the field without a penalty, which rarely came. Not sure how much of a difference Matterson could have made, but I believe it was an error from Ryles leaving him out of this team, especially after losing Luca earlier in the week.

We have gotten better since the beginning of this season. Earlier this year if we played a team completing at 90% and we kept giving the ball back so easily as we did today, we would have been pumped by 50+. We still have a long way to go though. We’ve held our own against some of the top sides now, having nothing to show for it. If we can continue this improvement and hopefully get some wins against some of the lower teams that would be nice.
 

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