You know guys, we were really gutsy out there. There was a lot of good stuff. But when you are down, you are down. That first Raiders try summed it up for me. What a bullshit bounce. A Dragons player bounces a Raiders player onto a Dragons player and they score. It's called a "hoodoo". The first try disallowed to Morris. Under the new laws, probably true. But Creagh had absolutely no influence on that try. Then we hold them out for (was it 5 sets?), finally get the ball and Creagh throws a miracle, and stupid, pass. We get down their end, King goes high and gets penalised. It went on and on and on. Yeah there was some silly stuff but it was a high pressure environment. I'm proud of my team. We have the basis of a very competitive side but have very few game breakers and no halves. Not hard to fix. End story.
It only takes a few games to turn things around.
On the match...
Our first disallowed try was a joke. How does a decoy runner 15m infield affect the try scorer?
Raiders were then awarded a try after Morris was tackled without the ball. And I'm sure Croker was offside when he scored from that bomb.
But good teams beat bad refs, we weren't good enough.
The line defence for the most part was fine and well drilled.
But too many silly errors at crucial moments. At least two big line breaks against us, and failed scrambling defence.
Too often there seemed to be a breakdown when it came to tackling the most dangerous man on the field - ie, the bloke with the ball.
The one that stung me was Beale's failure to smash the ball carrier late in the match. He actually hesitated when the Raiders player was lining up his support.
That was the moment to hammer him, but Beale seemed to be frozen in the moment. I wonder if he would have done the same thing if we were six points ahead and defending a match winning lead - I think he would have smashed him.
But the confidence is down, and in my opinion that is the greatest problem we have at the moment.
