Thought Steve Michaels actually did pretty well defensively.
Thought Steve Michaels actually did pretty well defensively.
That's reasonably good news compared to worse case .
Despite the loss, congrats on the crowd and atmosphere last night David. The activities and stuff happening outside the stadium felt like a carnival or fair ... Was a really great vibe and I was taken back to 2009 when ppl loved there footy team and a night at skilled park was an 'event'.
P.s. I had a spare seat and couldn't give it away.... The half dozen ppl I asked were already going. And these ppl aren't usual footy goers.
I can't help but think we're in real trouble come Origin time, if last night is anything to go by (Aiden's late cut 'n the reshuffle, which created the end result). We all pretty well know whose going to get called up for Origin, and as you could imagine it quite a daunting prospect that I'm not looking forward to. I know we got likes of Chalky, Mini and so on to slot in, but is it going to be enough?
Let's analyse Cartwright's decision to replace Sezar with Bird:
5/8 becomes weaker with a player who is poor at kicking, poor at passing before the line and poor at creating room for outside men. The backrow gets weaker by losing one of the best backrowers in the comp and the bench rotation is weakened by the addition of a back.
He managed to seriously disadvantage us in THREE position as a result of ONE injury. He also curtailed our entire game plan, which was to win through the middle because the better coached Broncos knew that there was no chance we were able to spin it wide so bottled up the centre of the field all night with a very compressed defensive line.
I am one of the biggest critics of both Rankin and Henry, but had one of these guys been brought in we would have been weakened at 5/8 and still maintained our strengths in the backrow and on the bench.
And don't get me started on having Greg Bird kick for goal, that is bush league stuff.
Last night was a pathetic piece of management, and the errors he made last week will carry into next weeks game against Parramatta because one or both of Henry and Rankin will have to come in and they do so knowing with absolute certainty that the only reason they are there is because the coach has no other choice. He showed ZERO faith in his support players and that sort of mismanagement usually gets returned in spades.
The last few weeks have proven that when everything is going smoothly we will be OK - good even, but as soon as we hit the slightest bit of adversity we will struggle behind a poor coach.
We cannot afford to lose to the Eels next week, those are the games we need to win to be playing finals footy.
And Zillman needs to dropped. He gets a zero for leadership, a zero for enthusiasm, a zero for positional play, zero for backing up Taylor and Bird who both had arms free at various times and a zero for his weak as water defensive play that led to the first try.
The crowd was also begging for a spark to try and get back in the game. With 10-12 minutes left, down by more than one try... That's when u need to pull out some chips behind the mine, or at the very least spread it wider early. The game could have gone for 2 hours and we would have kept ploughing up the middle with blinkers on.
Oops.. The Floodgates have opened!
Something I'd like to add. Is I thought when they named Taka in the side, earlier in the week. That they might be bringing him back a week or two too soon. Now I guess were not going to see him for a few weeks yet.
Another thing that I noticed but let go, and now stands out in hindsight was birds comments about the attack combinations...
I'm on my phone so its hard to go back and quote and bold text, but it was along the lines of ' we do our attack and combinations training in our own time and after training... It's player led, no coaching staff'
That's staggering.
Zillman being the fittest in the team has no eagerness to break the line or do anything in attack. A very crap fullback, Numerous times i have seen him standing around waiting for something to happen and waiting for something to come to him. Best fullbacks create opportunities and try to get their hands on the footy as much as possible. Its very frustrating and i beg for him to be dropped. Matty Russell or Marmin Barba are much much better options.
2013 - Sezer's breakout year