for mine our halves are the biggest issue because what shits me is they have talent and showed that last year
why have they forgotten how to play ? same players and same coach as last year, why are they so shit now ?
mind boggling
Agreed in the end I think a fair chunk of the reason why we struggled so much this year was our halves. I was as big of an advocate as anyone for the both of them but they're performances this year and they're failure to have any sort of cohesion reflected in our attack, we were absolutely ordinary in attack and so so easy to defend against. What changed so much to last year?
But also not surprising because if we wanted to be dead serious, Moses was key to our surge into the finals Norman was hardly setting the world on fire once Moses arrived, we just didn't want to believe it, well I didn't anyways but this year showed the truth of all the papered cracks from last year.
Which leads me to believe now that one of them has to go, I personally don't think they can play together, and it's not even about an attitude or relationship thing, they just simply do not work as a good halves pairing on the same team together and they hardly ever have. So who goes? I don't know because I do think both of them can be brilliant players but not in the same team. I would be torn to choose but for us to move forward I do think this may have to happen. Norman was on the BSB the other morning and he was even at a loss as to why they just don't work well together, and that's a concern for me.
But above everything I have just mentioned our biggest issue this year and even last year is defensively. What the f**k do they do at training, I could count over 50 times this year with no exaggeration the amount of times we would simply not be able to count and get outnumbered and overlapped out wide to concede a try. Our defence is diabolical, it wasn't even up to scratch last year. Defence is about attitude so they say, so the fact that this has been an issue for awhile now is alarming. I have been saying on here for ages that they way we played in 2016 was what premierships are built, tough, steely, gritty and grinding. Where has that all gone? Under the same coach and nucleus of players. We were finally breaking away from being a club that loses week in week out and then we get pulled back down to the bottom, why?
What is so wrong? What has changed? Same coach, same group of players, yet we have won yet another wooden spoon. Until we become a solid defensive unit and a team that can turn the tide of a match when it isn't in our favour then expect more of this, we are a losing club and it is all we know. So many times this year things didn't go our way, any decent team would have been able to hang with the opponents when it was tough going and get themselves back into it, not us, we would go and get flogged by 40+.
Mad rant I know but I haven't posted anything for awhile, this year has severely left a very bitter taste in my mouth and just when we looked like we were going forward we have taken 10 steps back.
I don't see it getting better anytime soon either, we have a few years of work to do in regards to our roster, we have too many plodders and some who are just not up to it, and this all takes time. On the flip sider who the f**k would wanna come here to play? What to see your career reach depths it never has before, very rarely do we see players kick on in the Blue and Gold and I think people know that now, I don't see our wait for a premiership ending anytime soon unfortunately.