Our support is mainly falling into two categories tonight. Category 1 'we were shit, we were lucky, we lacked structure, we lacked discipline'.
Category 2 'we should have won by more, the dogs are crap'.
I just don't get either of these two viewpoints. The dogs have a forward pack chock full of internationals. Klemmer, Graham and Jackson are nails hard, Hopoate and Morris are SOO players. Over the last month or so, they have had Jackson and Klemmer backing up from SOO, Grahm missing through injury They have had Reynolds missing for 7 games (he may be crazy, but he is their best half), Brett Morris and Hopoate have been out injured. Their position is misleading due to injuries and suspensions. With all their players onboard, they will be what they have always been, a tough, disciplined football team. They are the seventh best defensive team, in spite of the injuries and suspensions because they have a tough culture at the Bulldogs.
We saw that last night. They kept hammering away in the forwards and made good metres at times. They had their usual shortcomings in the halves, but were still tough to beat. Hopoate 208m, Morris 135m great numbers from two SOO backs. Why do we think we should have thrashed them?
And now to the other "we're shit and we know we are' viewpoint. Given the dogs have a tough forward pack and we were missing Moylan and Merrin and Cartwright and JFH aren't fully fit yet, I thought we did quite well. Cleary's kicking game has improved out of sight (Brandy is a genius) and we scored points through building pressure NOT luck. The kicks that led to tries are exactly the type of play we lacked earlier in the season which just led to us handing the ball over. Our 5/8th was having his 2nd first grade game and played well. As others have said, our centres bombed a few tries (probably not used to getting the ball with Moylan missing) so the score probably flatters the dogs.
In the forwards, once again we stood our ground and matched them. Tamou 183m, RCG 136m, Yeo 100m, Browne 103m even Cartwright made 77m in 7 carries in his short time on the field. This was in spite of losing Latu who only played 21 minutes. Wallace made 52 tackles.
The last two weeks have shown promising signs that sometimes we can grind it out, its not pretty but lurking beneath the surface is still a brilliant skilful team which we saw glimpses of last night. Flashy won't get the chocolates against the dogs, we kept that in check and in my view played the right way to win.
