State of origin series

[Iamback]

With a bit more time to think about it I don't think Cleary was as bad as I thought last night.

He took control for the final twenty minutes of the first half and looked like NSW would run away with it.

Then the errors started and kept going.

Major issue was the fifth tackle kicks with nothing mid field bombs.

It was one out stuff. Not many options besides the kick

 

[WestyLife]

When does he need to do that in club level though?

As for Luai. There was 4 in the tackle I doubt anyone knew the situation at that stage. Would just be a crowd of players

If it's not in his game for whatever the reason he won't be the top level elite half he's labelled as.

Luai was staring straight at him with no other player there. He then doubled down on it as per an article today.

 

[Iamback]

Luai might hold on for 1 more year

Halves will be fine. Turbo and Latrell back helps the side massively

 

[Iamback]

If it's not in his game for whatever the reason he won't be the top level elite half he's labelled as.

Luai was staring straight at him with no other player there. He then doubled down on it as per an article today.

Well I never had him as an elite player anyway. Very few elite 7's in the game anymore.

Where he says he didn't know he was knocked out?

 

[Iamback]

Only 3 players had more than a single try Assist.

Cleary 3
Luai 2.

Both were equal top try scorers... neither is going anywhere

 

[Smug Panther]

Martin is ideally a bench prop at NRL level. Freddy is a loon

 

[hindy111]

hindy111: I've said my piece. I will leave it there.

You called me a troll. But I am just having an opinion. I demand an apology as I have stuck up for you on here in the past.
Actualy I don't care that much. I am happy to be wrongly accused of being a troll

 

[BossleyPanther]

Cleary hasn't been good all year. No chance though when does our pack get owned like that?

Alot of talk about how now they will play against us. we play all 3 sides in our top 4. Losing 1 here is ok, as long as we get better during Semis.

 

[hindy111]

Martin is ideally a bench prop at NRL level. Freddy is a loon

Martin and Jake don't make a lot of meters. Haas was a huge missing. Safiti went well. Jnr ok but not used to his potential with offload ability.

 

[hindy111]

Halves will be fine. Turbo and Latrell back helps the side massively

And also imagine Haas along with Wightin for Talaki

 

[BxTom]

Tedesco tried hard but I only saw him pass once the whole game. So when he had the ball the game did not flow.
Crichton is 21 and his game reflected the NSW situation of little go forward.

Tedesco - where the ball goes to die...

 

[Girds89]

Nathan played penrith ball. Maybe he thought that would be enough to win.

Wasnt. The midfield bombs down pongas throat only helped kick start their sets.

Tbh like ive said all year i really hate this kicking routine nathan is in. Not sure if its coaching or what but its shocking.

Just mix it up for crying out loud.

Mistakes come from a pressure build up and dce and hunt knew exactly when to kick early last night to relieve pressure and it killed nsw. Every time we had the looking to be pinned to their 30 dce or hunt kicked early and it turned us around.

Did nathan do that once?

For the rest of the year with penrith i want yo see adrastic improvement in his kicking out of our own end.

You can bet your bottom dollar the whistle will go away in the finals like it does in origin and it will be much harder to get out of damger cause the 10m will be less penalised.

Nath should start practicing now early kicks im sets.

With 3 games up our sleeve nath and the team can afford to try new things...

Id be happy for him to go for a 40/20 on tackle 2 on our 30m just to mix it up.

Right now even the crap teams just wait for the mid field bomb.

Hopefully this loss gives the boys extra motivation to go to another level the back half of this year.

 

[billypilgrimnz]

I don't think Nathan is going to be the immortal some people assume he will be. He's just a solid halfback that does what he is told. He's basically a Cooper Cronk with less flair. And that's okay! He won us a Premiership and, hell, Chad Townsend and Mitchell Pearce have won a comp, so we don't need him to be anything different given how our team operates. But put him in a different environment where there is less structure and less time to drill a game plan into place, and he will often just default to the same old robotic plays because he just does not have that off-the-cuff brilliance that other much better halfbacks have had (Thurston, Cronk, Johns etc).

 

[Smug Panther]

I don't think Nathan is going to be the immortal some people assume he will be. He's just a solid halfback that does what he is told. He's basically a Cooper Cronk with less flair. And that's okay! He won us a Premiership and, hell, Chad Townsend and Mitchell Pearce have won a comp, so we don't need him to be anything different given how our team operates. But put him in a different environment where there is less structure and less time to drill a game plan into place, and he will often just default to the same old robotic plays because he just does not have that off-the-cuff brilliance that other much better halfbacks have had (Thurston, Cronk, Johns etc).

He's 24. He'll end up better than Cronk I have no doubt in the world but yeah he will never be in the Joey or Locky class.

JT is massively overrated, defence is half the game and he f**king sucked

 

[hindy111]

He's 24. He'll end up better than Cronk I have no doubt in the world but yeah he will never be in the Joey or Locky class.

JT is massively overrated, defence is half the game and he f**king sucked

Thurston's best I seen in attack. Lokpckys defense also sucked.
Nathan was great in game 2. Was great untill halftime last night.
Forwards played only average and the backs where shit. I dont blame Nathan for last night's loss.

 

[Smug Panther]

Thurston's best I seen in attack. Lokpckys defense also sucked.
Nathan was great in game 2. Was great untill halftime last night.
Forwards played only average and the backs where shit. I dont blame Nathan for last night's loss.

The forwards were god awful. Only 1 made over 100m

 

[BossleyPanther]

Next year I'd like to see Robson at 9 Korisou too and have Hynes in the back. No more Crichton, Talakai or Martin

 

[Pomoz]

I hate the midfield bombs whenever Cleary does them, whether for Penrith or NSW. But they did not kick start sets for QLD. The kick chase was good. It also prevented 7 tackle sets.

The problem was that many of his kicks were done inside his own half because our forwards didn't get us up the field. DCE on the other hand, was kicking off the back of half line breaks and good ball movement and had more time to place his kicks and a better position for early kicks. Tupou also lost confidence in his catching and let the ball bounce (they didn't kick towards To'o very often. Smart move) giving away even more return metres and giving us poor set starts.

Cleary couldn't klick early because we were pinned inside our 20m zone and we would have been giving them set starts at the 35 to 40m point. You only kick early if you can get the ball down the other end far enough to pin the team down.

DCE had a great game but that's because his team gave him time and space. Cleary had that for about 15 minutes of the first half and delivered a try and a forced drop out. At half time the NSW forwards were obviously given mogadon because they all went to sleep in the second half and Cleary was kicking inside the 30m line repeatedly. They had 44% possession, 0 linebreaks, and only 11 kicks compared to QLD's 16.

All this nonsense about Burton better than Luai. Burton went missing after he was bashed. Simple as that. I don't blame him, he will be better for the experience. Luai also got smashed and threatened repeatedly. He threw a pass into touch, scored a try. He was in it up to his armpits. Burton maybe better than him one day but he is not there yet.

I thought Crichton had a dud game but Burton was way worse. He got the ball 13 times, made 3 runs and 10 tackles at 67% efficiency. Crichton got the ball 15 times and made 11 runs and 21 tackles at 84% efficiency. if somebody had actually backed him up and caught his offload, we might have viewed his game differently. I thought the lack of support from the Blues as he stood in the tackle was just as bad as his errant pass and that lack of intensity was the difference between the two teams in the second half.

 

[Kilkenny]

I take my hat of to the Queensland side in both SOO 1 and SOO 3 the Blues led in the first half only to conceded rather fortuitous tries very late on the first half. They got the job done so full credit to them. We can analyse the shortcomings of our own players in both losses but again I just think the Maroons played a more expansive game, particularly last night, we were far to conservative and I think the coach has to take some responsibility for that along with some of his selections.

If you gave me a choice of whether I would prefer Katoni Staggs or Stephen Chrichton in our own side then it is a no contest. Staggs every day of the week . Stephen Chrichton is a good player, just not a great player and not SOO standard. Not yet anyway.

Sadly Queensland deserved there win, they were the better side.

 

[The Realist]

The more I think about it the more I'm disappointed in our boys not backing Burton up, especially Martin and Yeo. Letting Tino target a good mate all night and doing sweet f**k all to protect him. Was cowardly really

Bit harsh on Martin there. He was on the other side of the field. Angus Crighton was rubbish.