Hey peeps,
Long time LU reader and massive Knights fan, first time poster.
Just my opinion of last night's game.
I personally didn't think we were all that bad last night TBH, I think it was more that the Dragons just out played us. There were some errors in our game but I think these were errors forced upon us by their defensive line, I would argue that the Dragons' defense last night was possibly their best effort all year, their forward pack was all over us.
I thought Boyd was much better last night than the last 6 weeks, he is showing patches of his class, that cut-out to Uate was perfect and exactly what I feel we have lacked out-wide for some years (not that Kurt at fullback couldn't set up his outside men but his execution of these plays can be a bit all over the place) Possibly Boyd's main issue right now is his involvement, I feel as if he isn't quite sure when to inject himself into the game, not sure whether other players out there are over-ruling him or whether he is just down on confidence but hopefully that try assist from him is the start of a rise in form and involvement.
Mullen was good without being great, as were our Wingers and Bedsy, Tahu was good when he had some space.
Probably the main disappointment for me (and many others so I have read) would be the performance of the forwards. I think it's safe to say we were dominated fairly comprehensively, I was happy with the decision to bring Tui back as I wasn't too sure what he did to get dropped in the first place, however I'm not sure why Faas was dropped (unless injured) as I think he really was what we needed last night, a guy to just run hard and fast, put a couple of tacklers on their backs and earn us a penalty or a quick play the ball. Unfortunately we really missed him last night as outside of Faas we don't have anyone who is capable of that.
Our goal-line defense was overall pretty good, the boys seem to be tackling for each other and our scramble was very impressive. Although Zeb's one on one miss was very poor. We should have been down by at least a couple more tries at half time but our last-ditch defense was up to it.
I thought the Zeb no try was a disgrace, I was watching the game at a noisy pub and couldn't hear the commentary but I was watching it and thinking to myself "what are they checking this for?" when they went to the video, and when it was no try I was shocked. TBH at the time I thought it must have been something other than the obstruction as I really couldn't see how the dragons player was prevented from tackling anyone (he wasn't even near the ball carrier at the time) but yeah that's a really bad decision in my books. However I think we got lucky with the Ben Creagh no try in the first 10 mins, I think he had enough control and downward pressure on it to be a try. Also realistically the way it was going we still would have been at least 2 points behind so still may not have scored again anyway.
I'm expecting a big game from us against the Panthers in a couple of weeks time, most of our squad will have lots of time to recover from the beating and hopefully will be nice and fresh so we can have a big one.
