I thought it was a really poor performance from the boys tonight. I get the feeling that Madge will give some of the players an absolute spray after some of the defending. In particular, I think we seem to be a bit vulnerable in our defensive line in behind our markers. In general our marker defense was poor all night. I don't know when or how that has crept into our game but I have never seen a team bust us up the middle around the edges of the ruck like the Cowboys did tonight - they got in and around our markers like they weren't even there! It made us look slow, cumbersome and immobile, in particular with the breaks made by Gavin Cooper and Jake Granville. Also, defending on both edges is again a problem. I'm not going to go on a rant about him again because I feel everything that needs to be said about him has, but Joel Reddy was again hopeless - I don't know why he feels the need to fly in!
Another area of concern is our kicking on the last tackle. I really do think we are missing that aspect of Adam Reynolds' game. Luke Keary wasn't bad but too often were his kicks not threatening enough or did not find open space when kicking from inside his own half. In stating that, I think Glenn Stewart looked good at five-eight and I like how Greg Inglis got into first receiver every now and then to shoulder some of the responsibility. I also felt, that we seemed to adopt an ultra-forward dominated approach. I think we did this to ease pressure and a bit of responsibility off our halves but the downside was the our outside backs were virtually anonymous.
Discipline again let us down. The number of penalties is not so much a concern as is the area of the field and the time in the game that we are giving them away. Its something that we really need to remedy and fast! In terms of positives, I was really impressed with both Burgess boys, David Tyrell is a real warhorse and Grevsmuhl looks a great back rower. All in all, it was a pretty lackluster performance and probably one that should never have happened given the half time lead. Its really disheartening given how well our forwards played at times.
