i can`t believe i`m reading people pointing the blame at Benji, blame others such as Fitzy and now Beau Ryan.
The BIG PROBLEM is the lack of heart and lack of aggression shown by our forward pack. We were up against a buch of mid thirty year old park footballers last night and they still towelled up our forwards, nothing short of disgracefull. It`s ok to point the finger at Benji, but when does he get the ball on the back of a good set of three or four tackles where our forwards have punched genuine holes in the defence and created a platform for him to work off ??? I`ll give you the answer, not once in the past 5 weeks.
There`s quite a simple reason why this isn`t happening, it`s because very few of our forwards have the heart to run hard, straight and aggressively and put a bit of fear in the defenders nor are they willing to hit hard and often when defending. Opposing forward packs love playing our bunch of softies and have done for the post five seasons.
I`ll start with Chris Heighington, good hard working footballer that every side needs, YES, but if he fair dinkum thinks he`s anywhere near SOO quality he`s kidding himself. If he can`t penetrate the defence when running the ball against the side that Souths fielded last night, then there`s not much hope of him troubling any defence.
Bryce Gibbs really needs to have a good hard look at himself, totally outplayed by three over the hilll park footballers in Jaiman Lowe, Garrett Crossman and Craig Stapleton.
Galloway wasn`t any better early in the game, but after being concussed he obviously got a rocket from the sideline and started running hard like he should be.
Andrew Fifita went ok in limited game time, he needs to not get discouraged when they use him as a decoy. If he keeps running hard onto the ball, he`ll quickly become one of the best props in the game, not too many good ones around at the moment.
Another genius move by our super coach and go into the game with three props and to play another talented young back rower in Simon Dwyer at prop. Dwyer is a super talent and he also went as good as any of our other forwards, but what a waste playing him in tight.
Liam Fulton was a little below par last night, but he did atleast try to run the ball hard, a few of our bigger forwards need to take note.
Gareth Ellis, very average game from Gareth last night as well. I can forgive him for one bad game because it is a rarity, but he needs to lift dramatically if we are to win any more games this season.
Another stroke of genius by our super coach was playing one of our three interchange forwards Mark Flanagan for very minimal game time. I think Flanagan is a reasonable footballer, but he isn`t fitting into the dynamics of our soft forward pack.
I hate to say it, but I don`t think we are any hope of coming out of this slump we are in this season, we need some mongrel in the side, someone off contract like Jeremy Smith would be a good start and i`d be more than willing to offload someone who plays with no mongrel like Heighington if it was necessary to fit him under our cap !!!
