Th writing was only the wall before the kick off, our starting back row was crap and the team had shown little over the last few weeks. A mate offered me 20 start and I knocked him back, I also told him that if Manly didn't put 40 on us they weren't premiership contenders. We won't win another game this year with this squad playing the way they have been playing over the last couple of months.
Our defence wasn't working as a unit, it killed us. We are far from innovative, look at the top runners in the comp every tackle has three men, two halt progress, the third comes in later, takes the man to the ground the top two roll him over on to his back. Or two take him to the ground a third runs slightly later and flops. There were probably 15 occasions last night that Manly had a third player come in just as the tackle was all but completed ,they probably should have been pinged 6 or 7 times, but it worked well for them, QLD did the same thing on Wednesday night. You would have thought with Kidwell on the coaching staff we'd have started to wrestle more efficiently. In contrast to the Manly defence our boys couldn't get them on their backs at all , they almost always got to play the ball standing up or from their knees.
We played up and in in our own 20 but wingers and centres kept shooting up out of th line and it presented manly with extra attacking options too regularly. It's a reflection that our outside backs are defensively incompetent/lack confidence in their ability. I'd prefer to see a compressed line with lateral movement, the inside defenders would have to work harder.
Moses definitely needs time to build up. On what he has put out so far in NRL he is going to get broken. Not critical of the lad but he is too light and way behind on strength. He was a boy playing against men out there last night and it'll be disastrous if he is allowed to play on at this level, put him away for next year or even 2016. We will not make the eight so why feed him to the wolves.
Not much to be said about our attack, there was no foundation for anyone to play good footy. When we did get a set or two with quick play the balls we looked pretty good, but we were dominated and coming of our backs every play the ball and couldn't get the defence back pedalling.
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