For the second time in three weeks, I can't believe I forced myself to sit there and watch that game again. Torture. Absolute torture and I don't know why I do it. I think it's my way of finding out what I 'really' thought of the game, removing reaction and emotion. In a way, it kind of helps me process what has just happened. Nevertheless, that sucked watching that again.
This will be a bit of a different report today, not too much good to say, but I really feel like I need to vent and get it off my chest.
Attack
Awful. Just plain awful. What the hell has happened? We were one of the most potent attacking sides in the comp earlier in the year, and now we struggle to even score a f**king try?!! It's a joke, an absolute joke. The wheels have well and truly fallen off. Yesterday, we lacked any sort of composure, timing and fluidity in attack. None whatsoever. In fact, I know we scored two tries, but aside from that, we failed to fire a shot against Newcastle. Credit to their defence for sure, but when you struggle to score points against Newcastle, it shows you how far we have fallen.
Just a rabble, simple as that. it's the best way to put it. Really awful and really tough to watch. You've got passes going to ground, wrong options being taken, mistimed runs, mistimed passes, no punch or direction at all. Getting done for silly obstructions twice is just plain shit.
Our spine, or maybe we should start calling them the spineless, were not connecting at all. The boys looked like they'd never even f**king played with each other. It was so out of sync.
Once again, f**king errors cruelled us too. The talk all week was execution, errors, completion rate etc, etc, but somehow, we come out and probably do even worse in that area. What the actual f**k? It's awful. Killed any sort of chance we had. It was so bad; I think our completion rate was under 60% at halftime. That is simply not up to NRL standard. Why is it still such a problem when ball handling has been a problem for 10 weeks now? I've lost all faith they'll fix it or that we'll click, it isn't happening.
Once again too, we played a flawed game plan. How the f**k can JD and the senior players not see that our conservative style is not f**king working anymore?! It gives me the shits. If we were making great meters through the middle, then fine, but the fact of the matter is, we weren't. We've become such a predictable and boring side.
Defence
Just to keep up with our average of conceding 27 points a game since Round 11, we go and concede 29 to the Knights. Jeez. It's embarrassing.
All year I've been saying it's an attitude thing and that our structures are there. Well, when you concede some of the tries we did yesterday, I think it's safe to say we no longer have the structure. Take the Knights first try for example. That's no individual player's fault, it was the entire right edge system as a whole. The Knights are shifting and no one has any thought, effort, or communication to even think about sliding. No, they all just hold their position and remain stagnant, allowing the ball to wiz past them. Go watch it, it starts with Jai and Keaon on the inside, if they make an effort to push hard from the inside and slide as soon as the wide pass goes to Ponga, so the guys outside them can slide too, that try probably doesn't get scored. But no, nothing happened.
We've become a weak team through the middle. Again, yesterday, we got calved up. No line speed, we wait for them to come to us. Yea, like that's going to f**king work. For God sake boys!!
I don't want to talk about our defence any longer or I'm gonna explode.
Player By Player
L.Mitchell: Beyond disappointed with his performance yesterday. Disappointed doesn't even begin to cover it. For nearly four years now, I've absolutely loved Trell. Adored him, stuck up for him and supported him through everything. He's been one of my favourites and despite yesterday, probably still is. However, I cannot defend him for the way he played yesterday. Honestly, it was a real turning point for me and I'm starting to see what a lot of people have said for years now. He was bordering on just taking the piss yesterday. Yea, his involvement in the game was higher, for sure. He took a few really strong runs and stuff, especially in the first half but that is not enough when you're supposed to be an absolute superstar. Firstly, a lot of his kick returns were weak. Instead of just running straight and hard into the defensive line, Trell looked for the easy option and either ran sideways trying to beat a tackle or passed it off to his winger for them to do the work. Rarely did he get our set started off the way it should be started. Even Taaffe shows more effort and desire on his kick returns. The rest of his game was piss poor. He made almost zero real impact in attack, failed to create any chances whatsoever for anyone, and just didn't look that interested in involving himself in our good-ball attack as often as he should. That's not to mention the three errors he made. All of them were a result of not caring, having no attention to detail, and just being way too casual. He tried to catch the ball with one hand all three times. What happened to using both hands Trell? Way too casual. Two of these errors directly gifted the Knights tries and I just can't forgive that. Then there was the missed goal from right in front. Unforgivable and shows where his head was at. Then to laugh about if afterwards? My God. This is all without even mentioning his incident in the last minute that he will now be suspended for. I love Latrell but you cannot defend him after that and yesterday was the turning point. He can bugger off if that's how he wants to turn up. He's on a million a Season and what has he done? Sweet stuff all really. he's unfit, lazy, and far too casual. I'm getting over him and it will take either a big Finals series (unlikely), or a big 2024 to turn my feelings around.
Johnston: Not an awful lot to say about AJ but he wasn't bad. No real opportunities in attack but he did his job in other areas. His hit ups were solid, he got through plenty of work, he was safe defusing kicks, and despite getting caught out a couple of times, wasn't too bad in defence.
Tass: To be honest, I'd kind of rinse and repeat what I just said about AJ for Tassy. He wasn't bad.
Graham: Love the bloke and hats off to him for playing tough. Honestly, that's a huge effort. However, let's not sugar coat it - that was probably his worst performance of his NRL career. His runs coming out of our end were really good. Really, really good, but that was about the only positive. His defence was terrible, especially in that first half. Newcastle's first try wasn't just his fault, as the whole edge as one failed to slide, but he was directly responsible for the Knights second try. Pretty poor effort on Ponga who made him look like a reserve grader and just went straight past him. Minutes later, Ponga makes another break. Again, this is Stretch's fault in my opinion as he was too passive and this time, Ponga burnt him on the outside. Disappointing. Stretch got picked apart again by Ponga for the Knights' third try. This time, it's a poor read from him as he comes up too far past the ball when Fitzgibbon is tackled, this allows Ponga to take the offload and with no one in front of him at all, he goes straight through. Not really good enough from Campbell, he certainly dropped his standards, I think even he'd admit that. Can't be too harsh on him, he's busted, and I have no doubt that injury is playing its part.
Milne: Wasn't great without being really poor. I think he was pretty good with the ball; his hit ups were really strong as he made a massive 158 meters from 14 runs. However, he lacked the pace to finish off the play about three times which was really frustrating. I think we missed out on at least two certain tries due to his lack of speed. Defensively, I don't think he did a lot wrong personally. Yea, we got caught out a lot down his side, but a lot of that wasn't Taane's fault at all, he was simply reacting to his inside defenders.
