Good showing ,
Young Brown again showed he's ready for first grade, such a cool head in attack and definitely not intimidated in defence.
Mau' had a good game, his set up draw and pass for Sivo? was awesome, sucked in the defence and passed late for a clear run. And he managed it again for an offload for Lanes' try. Whilst I agree with others he was good through the middle, both of these plays were created on his preferred left edge.
Fergo showed exactly why we missed Semi last year coming out of our own end, i think that's a huge difference between last year and the year before, and it showed in how little trouble we had coming out of our own end.
Lane seems another good signing, bends the line and is hard to wrap up so got in a coupla offloads that were dangerous, something we really didn't have last year.
I liked Tepai at lock, with more options on the edges this year I think he'll be spending more time in the middle, and will do well there.
Gutho was very solid, his positioning in defence seemed faultless, and his work rate through the middle was high, I liked what I saw there
Gennings did enough for mine to be given first dibs at left wing, despite the awful drop ( which I reckon was more the fault of the timing of the pass ) he ran with purpose, broke a few tackles and made meters.
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Mahoney is a keeper, his service has improved over the off season, and his scoots out of dummy half were effective and seemed surprisingly quick as opposed to what we saw from him last year. Nice to see he has a kicking game as well,
I thought Mannah and Alvaro were both very solid in defence, but lacking in attack, Alvaro looked a little underdone for mine, but with Jnr to bash and barge, they'll do the job we need from them.
Terepo was great, same hitting the line at speed as you'd expect, but actually managed to bend the line and get some post contact meters, and cap it off with a reasonably quick play the ball.
Nathan Brown looked just underdone, and like others I agree he seemed to just get in the way too much. His limited minutes suggest he's not quite fit enough, so plenty of upside there.
Overall we have got ourselves a pack that won't be dominated anywhere near as much as last year, add Jnr to the mix and we'll control the pace of our games more often than not this year. I reckon our pack is very under rated by most pundits, and it will outperform expectations of most this season.
On the negative side, Moses needs to pull his head in and think about his pass selection, there was some real gash in there, just dumb shit he needs to get out of his game. Also it seems we are going to rely on him too much in kicking duties, particularly coming out of our own end. Teams will read that too easily.
Not overly impressed by our centres either, Taka was ok, solid in defence , but he's just too f**king slow. Jennings just didn't really do anything of any real note. again defensively solid, but we need some attack from such an important position. Hopefully he comes good because we other than Salmon ( who is still unproven ) we just don't have a lot of choice from what I can see.
Oh, and gee I hope we don't have to give Will Smith too much game time this year, cause that'd really suck balls.
