I can't for the life of me work out why so many people are getting worked up over the halves. Yes, they probably aren't 1st grade standard, but they weren't the problem yesterday. Yesterday we lost the game in the middle, and the stats tell you that. Our back five all ran for over 130 m, telling you how much work we had to do bringing the ball out of our own end of the field. Our only forwards to crack the 100m mark were Couchman and Su'A. We had very little impact from anyone else. I thought Egan went well, but the rest were ordinary. Klemmer, Luc, and Jack barely broke the 20m mark with their post-contact, a telling statistic that shows you Parramatta's dominance in the middle.
Looking at their stats, you see a massive 190m for Paulo with nearly 80 post-contact, and their two back rowers, Lane and Kautoga, running for 90m and 130m, respectively, and both just shy of 50m post-contact. Hopgood, also just shy of 100 m, and Dylan Walker, 143m. It tells you the story. We lost the middle, plain and simple. And you can rest assured that it won't be the last time that happens this year. Complaining about the halves is like whingeing about a dislocated finger when your whole arm is broken and in a sling. In saying that, I'm not making excuses for them. Flanagan was missing in action for most of the game, and Ilias wasn't much better.
At the end of the day, in the off-season, we needed to recruit middles, and we didn't. And it's not like these players weren't available. I remember when Sitili Tupouniua was mentioned, and we didn't end up chasing him, which I found baffling since every man and their dog knew we looked forward light coming into this year. Does anyone seriously think we couldn't do with a player like Sitili now?
I have a terrible feeling that yesterday's formula will be repeated time and time again this season, and there's nothing we or the players who end up playing in the halves can do about it...