vs Cowboys

[jaseg]

The contrast between the top sides and the also-rans is massive in this comp.

I went to the Storm Roosters game on Saturday night, in driving rain and cold, and both sides completed 90% of sets, chancing their arm when it was available and getting to kicks solidly the rest of the time. And that's with two big packs hitting hard.

Then we play in perfect conditions and we drop the pill 12 times out of 30 odd sets. It's inexperience I know but it's frustrating as hell.

And letting someone score twice from dummy half, something he has always had in his game, is horrendous.

Disagree with most of that - except the part apart the dummy half tries... that should NEVER happen, let alone twice in one game from a guy who also did it to us last year. Those were filthy, droppable offences.

The Roosters & Storm both had good completion rates (neither at 90%), but they weren't really chancing their arms. They didn't create all that much. Almost no offloads, very few linebreaks and consequently less points from both teams. Hardly a result of defensive mastery either - the teams combined for a total of 59 missed tackles in the game (for comparison the Cows/Warriors game featured 56 missed tackles).

I don't think there is too much of a gap between any set of teams right now. Of last year's standout teams the Roosters have struggled for coherency, the Bulldogs have been crippled by injury (and creativity, or lack thereof) and Souths lost two of the best forwards in the game. The Storm are treading water, Manly are in decline, the Panthers are as injury-riddled as ever and the Cowboys still not quite performing at the level that roster should - the question has to be asked; will they ever? Only the Broncos look to be on a notable upward trend, which is very understandable given the position they were coming from and the Bennett factor.

 

[Penrose Warrior]

On that note I'm not looking forward to playing my local team again this season, Penrith.

'Aussie Jim' Segeyaro will be a nightmare, and our boys will have no idea he's probably the best scorer from dummy half in the comp.

They bloody better realise. Didn't he kill us last year up the middle?

Fair points jaseg but what I saw on Saturday night was a brand of football we're not capable of playing. I was very impressed.

 

[Manu Vatuvei]

In the other thread Matulino and Lillyman were getting all the points and everyone was talking up the forwards/talking down the backs, but I don't really get it.

Not that I would blame Matulino and Lillyman as individuals, but it was obvious to me throughout the game that they were killing us with their go-forward. It was especially noticeable when we had the ball as on a number of occasions we were struggling to make 20-30 metres on a set. I can't look at that and call it a good performance by the forwards.

The backs made a shocking number of basic errors. They also contributed basically all of our points via 2 big Hurrell breaks, a huge Manu run and a very nice team try scored by Wright.

Story of the game for me was our forwards got largely outplayed and our backs put us under shitloads of pressure but then balanced it out by scoring all of our points generally against the run of play. Honestly on balance we were pretty much outplayed in that game so it's hard for me to get too wound up about our eventual loss. The forwards struggled for yards and we made a million errors.

 

[jaseg]

Not that I would blame Matulino and Lillyman as individuals, but it was obvious to me throughout the game that they were killing us with their go-forward. It was especially noticeable when we had the ball as on a number of occasions we were struggling to make 20-30 metres on a set. I can't look at that and call it a good performance by the forwards.

The issue with the pack going forward was more the 11, 12 & 13 though - our props were good. Lillyman, Vete & Matulino all averaged between 8 & 9 metres per run - as did Scott, Tamou & Hannant for the Cowboys. Bolton & Lisone both put up better than that. In total our props actually made more metres than theirs. The backrow comparison is ugly, though - Peyroux/Hoffman/Mannering/Thompson all between 7-7.75 mtrs/run, and here are the Cowboys:
Cooper - 7.54
Lowe - 9
Taumalolo - 8.25
Asiata - 11.67
Their backs actually out-ran ours also.

As a quick aside, Scott Bolton surely has to be the most underrated prop in the game. Churns out quality minutes, great metres per run, relatively few mistakes.. good movement on him, can cover the edges, had a very good season last year also - but playing alongside Scott, Tamou & Hannant means he's going to be constantly overlooked.

Anyway, the big thing I take away from the game was that we looked the more dangerous team (7 linebreaks to 4, in large part thanks to Kata's running game) yet between the errors (mainly coming out of our own half, but also stopping us converting all/more of those breaks into tries) and some seriously shoddy dummy half defence we contrived to lose that bloody game.