Woweee that was a nail biter!! An absolute rollercoaster of a game but I'm so stoked to get the win in such a crucial game. getting the two points there was really, really important at this stage of the Season. Not happy with how we played though and to be completely honest, I don't think we deserved to win that game. However, you have to give full credit to the boys and I am so friggin proud of the boys for the way they never gave up and through everything, somehow found a way to get the win. There is no give up in this team and to come away with the two points in that scenario is certainly something to be happy about.
Our attacking play was great tonight I thought. The boys had no problem making meters, we were able to roll up the field relatively well and put ourselves in good field position time after time which was pleasing. The offence close to the line was impressive too, we looked super dangerous, asked plenty of questions of the Cowboys defence and scored some brilliant tries. I'd almost say that when we got up that end and put ourselves in a good position, we were almost able to score at will, thus was the potency of our attacking plays. Some beautiful tries scored down that left edge in particular. So yea, these parts of the attack were certainly on.
What was not on was our ball handling and this is what almost cost us the game once again. We slipped into old habits and started dropping balls all over the place again, seeing a poor completion rate and huge pressure coming our way at times. It seemed that we would do everything we could to let the Cowboys back in after we scored because we'd just start to get on top and then we'd make a really poor error to let them back in. This made tonight's game a real rollercoaster because our errors made it so up and down. If we had a good completion rate tonight and we didn't keep letting them in with mistakes, I feel that with the way we were attacking, we could have steamrolled them. It's simply not good enough that handling and I'm sick of it.
We were found wanting on defence tonight. The boys were doing really well with that run of possession North Queensland had in that first half, we went about 15 minutes without barely tounching the ball but yet we were still able to turn them away. Apart from that little period, I thought defence on our own line was very poor, we cracked far too easily, far too often. Some of their tries were very soft and some of the defence I saw out there was simply not good enough. Again though, I feel this comes back to our errors. I feel that the Cowboys should have never been in some of the positions they were but we just kept letting them in and we couldn't defend our errors, hence the see-saw game.
Mitchell: Latrell had an off night tonight. Was far less involved and struggled to inject himself. He did have some nice touches in attack in the lead up to a few of our tries but that was about it from him tonight. He really struggled under the high ball too. Latrell is always going to have the odd game like this but I just hope he can bounce back next week to prove that it does only happen in the odd game.
Johnston: Scored two tries through two beautiful finishes so credit to him there but apart from that, I thought he was average tonight. Just a really low involvement as he didn't do a lot to help the forwards through taking hit ups. Also, really poor defence for Morgan's first try. Morgan should have never have scored that with the amount of players we had to cover but it was some real arm grabbing stuff from AJ. He also made an error which lead to Dunn's try. Certainly a tough catch but a try cause none the less.
Graham: Cammy was pretty solid I thought. He had some really nice runs and looked pretty dangerous, he also did the hard yards well coming out of our own end. Scored a great try through a nice hole run off a crash ball from Cookie and I remember him making a brilliant try saving tackle in the second half (can't remember who it was on). An error and a poor effort to compete for the ball on one of the Cowboys tries were the only real blemish on his performance tonight.
Gagai: Gags was a little quiet in this one too actually. He did score brilliant team try and had some pretty solid hit ups but his output wasn't where it has been in the past this year. Along with AJ, he also contributed to Michael Morgan's first try due to some poor arm grabbing defence.
Paulo: It's hard to be harsh on inexperienced kids but yet another member of the backline who was off tonight. He just barely got involved, hardly even came in to take a hit up. Was also bamboozled by the Hammer for his try. Jaxson is a better player than what he showed tonight.
Walker: Wasn't his best game but I thought he was still pretty good. Was trying really hard and was creating plenty of opportunities out there. Combined well with Reyno and he had a pivitol hand in many of our tries, most noteably a brilliant try assist for AJ's first four pointer. I thought he was great on defence too, coming up hard and being aggressive which was good to see. He did have two poor handling errors but that was the only times he put a foot wrong all night.
Reyno: Brilliant game from the ice man, our skipper, certainly our best tonight. Outstanding play for his try to recognise that no one was home at the back, chip over the top, get there and then put it down for a great try, that was awesome. He controlled our attack really well all game too. Reyno was often the one to get the move started and he played really direct and played really square which helped to draw the Cowboys defence in. His kicking game (goal kicking included) was on song and he was good in defence. When we really needed him to step up in the dying moments, he delivered big time but slotting that penalty goal from a difficult position to draw us level and then to win the game in a clutch moment.... That field goal was incredible, he has ice in his veins our Reyno! Great game skipper!
