Also: ironically given we "only" conceded 22 against the best team in the comp, I thought our defence was actually worse than ever today.
They were rumbling forward easily up the middle and it was embarrassing how often the simple inside-ball to Slater showed us up. Some of our forwards defending up the middle were very culpable here, on one occasion in particular there was a woeful non-effort from Mateo to cover the inside ball.
It seems to me that we play a very compressed D (just like the attack....) and accordingly are constantly caught short by ball movement. The result is our edge defenders get criticized, when really the problem is the structure, and the fact that our defence in the middle is not as dominant as it should be given the numerical advantage. We constantly commit 3 and 4 on 1 but don't dominate.
We showed more guts than normal today with the scramble but our overall D was dreadful.
Early in the season we were playing a very compressed D which was getting exposed easily. Since about Round 5 or 6 we have gone for a more numbered D, and it was working much better for about 3 rounds. But now it seems to have fallen apart again. I will watch the game again today, but I really don't think it's compressed D causing the problems.
We still seem to have major communication issues in the Taylor / Johnson / Henry / Manu side - they don't appear to work as a unit, and panic as soon as there's quick ball movement in their zone. One of them seems to invariably rush up and leave a hole to be exploited.
On the other flank, we have Mannering who is a fantastic tackler but still seems to miss the odd crucial one, kamikaze Maloney who constantly rushes out of the line, Hurrell who is improving but still pretty raw in his technique, Tupou who gets wrong-footed easily, and Fish floating around the back who offers dick all as a last line of defense.
