I wasn't able to watch the game but in saying that, this appears to be one of those matches where the statistics tells the story. In wet weather footy, the two biggest factors are position and possession; everything else is irrelevant. Basically, you need to hold onto the footy at all costs and play down in the opposition's half of the field. According to Fox Sports stats, the Dragons dominated territory 61%-39%. This could largely be due the fact that we conceded 14 penalties to the Dragons 7 and made 11 handling errors compared to the Dragons 7.
Basically, playing in the wet is an art and I think it is something that we have yet to come to terms with over the last few years. I always feel that our forwards get bogged down, our hookers can't make any real metres out of dummy half and our backs get deprived of the ball. For instance, I can remember us losing to the Sharks last year in torrential rain in April and only just managing to get over the line against Parramatta in similar conditions at ANZ. What we need to do in the wet is to keep things simple, by keeping the ball close to the run - 1-2 passes max. By doing that there is less chance of making errors and hence, turning over possession. Having a player with a good kicking game also comes in handy and so I think having Adam Reynolds today may have saved us.
Penalties are something that I have spoken about ad nauseam; its been a big problem for the last 18 months and nothing has changed. We continue to give away penalties at key moments in the game and in bad areas of the field in excess. This is an absolute killer as it releases all the momentum and pressure that we have built up; you can't pin a team in their own end if they are given a free ride out of there due to ill discipline. To give away any number of penalties in double figures is unacceptable, let alone 14. This needs to be fixed if we have any aspirations of beating the likes of Brisbane, Melbourne etc.
