Robinson was the difference yesterday. He worked out our weakness and devised a plan accordingly. Mary did not do anything by the looks of it; probably celebrating his extension instead.
We had no line speed in the first half, giving the Rooster's forwards plenty of time to wind up and their halves plenty of time to weave their magic. Easts were standing deep and hitting the advantage line at speed. On the other hand we were standing flat in attack and I believe Easts had to be offside because on many occasion they were in our face and we hardly made ground at all. To make things worse Norman and Hunt were kicking high rather then long giving the Roosters plenty of good field position.
The one sided refereeing surely got to our boys and the lack of possession was really difficult for them to overcome. Just the same too many mistakes at vital times and thus the result.
Spot on Possm
I wonder if Mary has short arms/deep pockets syndrome and doesn't want to pay a $10k fine as he just keeps shtum every week despite his team getting the rough end of the pineapple. While I am desperate to see him replaced for a whole range of reasons and poor team selections (principally but not exclusively Ravalawa and Aitken) and some embarrassing and basic errors contributed to our loss yesterday, I am also outraged that we continue to cop downright wrong or at least questionable decisions week after week.
There are now at least four no tries that have been called against us in the last few weeks for adjudged but highly doubtful forward passes. Even the biased Fox commentators have been forced to admit that touch judges just don't seem to understand that as long as the ball is projected backwards out of the hand, it constitutes a fair pass- despite where it ends up. I remember the mystified looks on the faces of Norman and Dufty after at least two of those decisions.
The blatant forward pass to Burgess from which he scored and the strip on Ravalawa (against the Broncs?) which also led directly to a try were two other howlers going against us in close games.
Yesterday we had Lomax being taken out in the air and a try resulted- no penalty- not even a review of the contest. A few minutes later, Lomax, with his confidence probably shattered, didn't even jump for yet another bomb as the Roosters were swarming all over him- another try nearly ensued.
Everyone talks about slowing the ruck as the cardinal sin in strangling the game, but I believe poor policing of the 10 metres is equally culpable. I keep hearing about fast moving defences but Usain Bolt couldn';t cover what should be about a 15metre gap between attacker and receiver in the games I'm watching.. You can see defensive players standing in front of the referee continually and flying up without being penalised. The Dragons, particularly in the first half,had multiple defenders in their faces, were not able to create second phase plays and our metre gains were terrible. Not a single off side call I can recall against the Roosters.
