Round 7: TITANS vs DRAGONS

[Titanic]

Ozy, you and I are two of the few consistent critics of this bobble-head ... I have never liked Henry in any of his roles and he may be a great bloke but I would take any number of possible candidates in front of him and how we missed Green is just beyond me.

[C-Whiz]

It was sh!t, the team played sh!t, the selections were pretty sh!t, and the game plan was totally sh!t.

[Toads]

I missed the first half, which seems to be a blessing going by today's comments. And what I seen of the second half is summed up perfectly by Whiz's post.

It was sh!t, the team played sh!t, the selections were pretty sh!t, and the game plan was totally sh!t.

Roll on next week.. Geezus, the Doggie's.

[Mexican titan]

That was BAD. Im all for looking on the bright side but the only positive I can say is Mead is hands down our best back. Cant fault him out there today gave it his all and HE IS OUR FULLBACK.

For the bad.
-Henry woeful coaching. The Mortimer/Friend experiment was a farce. It did neither of them any good and no impact.
-Don and Nene need to go back to QCup. Poor defense and deadset bombed 2 tries. How someone of Nenes size places the ball on his lap and gets held up is beyond me.
-Worst game from our halves kicking wise all season. Why we kept going to the air when Dugan had us covered is beyond me.
-Our defensive line is an absolute mess. we REFUSE to come off the line and give away 10-20m a hitup.
-Not 1 player near Widdop at the end there made a dive to stop the field goal.
-Bird might not be our captain but he is obviously the team leader as there was no one doing that today.

There was some good positives to take out of last week but the game there today was about what the comp expected from us before round 1. Henrys inability to select out best 17 makes it hard to get excited for next week but onwards and upwards I guess

That pretty well sums it up for me, without rehashing many other comments.
That effort today really took me back to the Carty days - 5 half hearted hit ups and a mindless kick. Regardless of any stats about hit ups, they mean nothing today in my book as not one forward ran with commitment and none would have knocked the skin off a rice pudding.
I saw little in Nene last year that made me think he is of NRL standard and nothing has changed. As for Zillman yet another run on the inside ( a play that just about every fullback in the comp gets right) but down goes the pass. Mead was the only one who got a passmark.
So much credibility that was built up has now gone and the Coast will just continue to lack any enthusiasm for the team as it's same old same old. Nothing has changed from what many said pre season - we need a quality fullback, centre, hooker and aback rower. I have hope Canavan can deliver.

[karnage]

I wasn't there. I had to work.

My Dad took my boys, he said it was a disgraceful game. You can't earn the respect of the rest of the comp by dropping points at home to a rabble like the Dragons.

[JunctionBlock]

We all need to thank the Newcastle Knights for taking tomorrows news focus off the Titans.

[Titan68]

I too agree with your comments 5YC. Changes need to be made to that team , cause if we don't , season 2016 will be over before it really got going

[DavidBouveng]

i actually thought Zill was better in defence today. But he should not have any input into set plays or options.

calling that inside ball play with 8 or so left was so bad. there was so much congestion around the ball, that even if we say he might time it, and catch it half the time ( pretty generous imo ), there was THREE defenders waiting to clean him up..and they did. the inside guy had his arms up waiting for the instant he caught it and smashed him. gives them the ball 10m or so from halfway and they knock over the FG... not great clutch from a captain.

Only commentator who is close to accurate is Gasnier. He is a genuine analyst and makes strong calls. rest are muppets. Hindmarsh said in pre season Myles is a 80 minutes player, but not just 80 minutes, they are all quality minutes, no slacking off... FML we would have been lucky to get 80 good minutes out of Myles all year.

I was really annoyed at Henry today. maybe he hates money i dont know, but today didnt look like decisions were made in the interest of making the finals. I still like what he is doing with the squad as far as commitment, professionalism and training.... but maybe it is time to call in a serious attack coach to make something happen.

I was gunning hard for Green when he was available, but we still had Carty too entrenched and our board wasn't looking seriously for a coach and they missed the boat. that one will hurt us, although i still dont think many coaches would be doing any better with this squad. Today is the first game we have lost that we should have won, other losses have been to teams that will finish top 5 and we were far from disgraced in any of them.

also... two 5 point losses. thats an odd one.

[Titanic]

The key point there JB is what Green or a decent coach could do with both the squad and our "war chest".

[Just-a-Fan]

I really dont know what to say Hoffman Mortimer and Zillman killing our team with Henry close behind
Why would you start Mortimer ?????? Why would you start Pulu ???? if he wanted to change it up start Douglas Put Jame out wide on the right and run at the halfs to tire them out
I think Taylor had a bad game this time but been great for us and I hope he is ok
I hope Widdop gets 2 or 3 week for attacking his head.
We made some meters today but just never finished our set off 5 out of our 8 forward made over a 100 meter
but our defense we missed 33 tackles
go the Titans

[teke]

Dugan is insane, that guy just gives his all to the very death in every game.

How he ankle tapped Mead is beyond me, then he backed up a few tackles later to stop a try under the posts

[rj62]

Ozy, you and I are two of the few consistent critics of this bobble-head ... I have never liked Henry in any of his roles and he may be a great bloke but I would take any number of possible candidates in front of him and how we missed Green is just beyond me.

I actually work in Townsville and live on the Gold Coast. You're dreaming about Green. The chairman of the Cowboys is omnipotent and what he says goes. That's the very reason no State of Origin gig for him . The answer was NO.

[shamus]

I knew it was gunna be a bad day when I kicked over my 2 beers just as the match started!

And the only positive to come out of this is my wife got the double!

[JunctionBlock]

The Wrap

By Neil Cadigan

Ryan James, who deservedly won the players’ player award yesterday, certainly could have done little more to try to inspire his team that was beaten for the third successive week by less than a converted try.

The prop played the entire 80 minutes, which is rare for a front-rower, and made an incredible 61 tackles against the Dragons while workrate-wise Luke Douglas was also impressive, with 46 tackles in just 44 minutes on the field.

James didn’t slacken off when the Titans had the ball either. He took the ball up 20 times, the most of any forward in the match, for 171 metres.

It surely has put him in well on the radar of the NSW State of Origin selectors after he was invited into camp last season as an indicator he is in their minds.

Yesterday’s loss, the sixth straight match in which the Titans conceded the first try early (Gareth Widdop crossed from a left-foot step on Leivaha Pulu in 8th minute), again showed the resilience and character of the side. However, on the flip side it also showed the team still has a way to go to take control of a game with get on the front foot and not have to rely on offloads, and second phase to score points.

It’s generally recognised the Titans don’t have the X Factor attacking star that some other NRL teams do, so they have to grind to victory and work for each other, which they have done for long stretches of every game. Effort and character has been in abundance.

And the team yesterday completed sets at 85 per cent, a season’s best and the fourth time in seven games completed at better than 80 per cent, something that was achieved only twice in 2015. It's about taking advantage of that possession and cmpleting sets better.

They had a setback yesterday when Eddy Pettybourne, who replaced the suspended Greg Bird, was on the field only six minutes when he suffered a compound dislocation of a finger in the 30th minute and was replaced three minutes later. At the end of the half Daniel Mortimer suffered a hamstring injury in the last play of the half after starting the match at hooker in place of co-captain Nathan Friend.

Leivaha Pulu, who started for the first time with Chris McQueen dropping to the bench, also injured a rib cartilage in the 29th minute but went back on under discomfort in the second half.

The Titans tended to play laterally at times, when direct play down the middle gave them good yardage (it was the key to the Dragons’ success) and relied on the cross-field kick to the in-goal, with almost brought a couple of tries when Nene Macdonald leapt high to get the ball but was held up and Anthony Don also leapt high to get the first touch but tried to tap the ball back to Macdonald when a clear catch might have seen a try.

But, as in previous weeks, crucial to the result were a moments that were matters of inches. The first was the Dragons’ third try that gave them an 18-6 half-time lead, coming from a rebound of a Widdop kick off the upright pad straight into Jack de Belin’s arms; and the second – just three minutes into the second half – when William Zillman put David Mead away (after a good Macdonald offload) down the left touchline but a desperate lunge by outstanding Dragons fullback Josh Dugan ankle tapped Mead and brought him down when a try looked certain.

A try early in the second half would have almost certainly dramatically changed the momentum of the game. Dugan’s lunge meant we’ll never know if that would have been the case.

KEY MATCH STATS

POSSESSION: Titans 53%, Dragons 47%

COMPLETION RATE: Titans 85% (33/39), Dragons 83% (34/41)

ERRORS: Titans 8, Dragons 9.

TACKLES: Titans 270 (missed 47), Dragons 300 (missed 18)

MISSED TACKLES: Titans 29, Dragons 20

OFFLOADS: Titans 14, Dragons 12.

LINE BREAKS: Titans 4, Dragons 4

PENALTIES: Dragons 7

TOP TACKLERS: James 61, Douglas 46, Friend 29, Taia 27, Mortimer 26, Taia 20, Taylor 20.

TOP METRE MAKERS: Mead 247, Zillman 226, Shillington 196, James 171, Paasi 164, Don 147, Taia 142, Hoffman 139.

MOST HIT-UPS/RUNS: James 20, Zillman 20, Mead 20, Shillington 19, Paasi 17, Taia 16.

TOP MINUTES (forwards): James 80, Taia 80, McQueen 51, Paasi 50, Shillington 45, Douglas 44, Pulu 41, Friend 40, Mortimer 40, Pettybourne 9.

*end*

Good article by Neil Cadigan. The stats show something I never expected but it appears our two biggest issues are our attack and defence. We seem to have issues tackling and scoring tries.

But seriously, I never expected our completion rate to be over 80%.

[Titanic]

Lol ... you're right JB, our biggest issues are attack and defence ... doesn't leave too much though

I actually work in Townsville and live on the Gold Coast. You're dreaming about Green. The chairman of the Cowboys is omnipotent and what he says goes. That's the very reason no State of Origin gig for him . The answer was NO.

Yes mate but that doesn't exclude the fact that we had Cartwright then and eventually traded him for a second-rate NRL journeyman in Henry instead of bidding aggressively for the emerging Queensland young gun coach and SEQ resident at the time in Green. The only redeeming factors are that we were bereft of funds and leadership, now we're bereft of coaching nouse and I should add my son is rj05