Most of us have cut Tomkins plenty of breaks, its round 10 now and the silly mistakes need to come out of his game. He wasn't terrible today but its not unreasonable to expect better things from a signing that big.
Friend was excellent today, not too many hookers in the NRL would have out-performed his effort.
We can all agree that Martel just doesn't seem to fit anywhere.
Big signings will have off games, the Warriors turning over ball never allowed their spine pairing to find rhythm, I don't think Tomkins is where we lost it.
I too thought Friend was outstanding, his tackle on Kasiano was the play of the match imo.
Still , the point I was making is that due to the things Friend is not strong in ( running....he was not up there with Luke ) and creating opportunities.
The other area Friend falls short , is his pass selection , he directed the attack far too often to the left today, that pass selection is what I meant by ' world class' hooker.
If you have someone like Smith / Luke/ Farrah...the team will go to that potent right side when the Ben Matulino playing Left backrower is not working ( too heavily marked ).
I thought the Dogs targeted three players really well, Matulino , Laumape and Hurrell.
That allowed Johnson to make those late plays in space.....oh had we a hooker that would have directed the attack clean and fast to Johnson on the right earlier....since he proved the one player too many for their gang tackling to shut down.
