Round 8 2013: NZ WARRIORS vs TITANS

[Nick]

Paragraphs please people! It is impossible to read things without spaces on a phone!

[teke]

Jamal's best game as a titan. We need to bring our centers and wingers into the game more / better, but that is nothing new. Sezer has a few gears to go up yet and showed some great signs today. Shame we can't seem to get any consistency in the halves with injury though. Again, i love James's aggression, and agree that momentum shifted in our favor when he came on for his second spell. He does need to check the penalties, but his talent and potential are worth investing in and persevering with. Ioane had a really solid debut and almost powered in for a try, he will be great for us over the origin period. I'm really liking Taka, despite the few defensive lapses in his game. As per the above, i still don't think the team knows how to use our centers to maximize their potential, and though we haven't seen near all taka can do yet, some of his touhes in his few outings with us have been class. Zillman finally scored a try. ... Round 8 ... all of a sudden he is Zilly Slater. He wasn't terrible today, people bag his passing game, but the few cut-out balls he's thrown this year have been the most threatening aspect of his game. Apparently he has a million line-breaks, but he must be making them through the queue to the dunny at half time, because i just don't see a dangerous fullback when i watch the titans play. For a fullback (and vice-captain 'leader of men' no less), he just goes missing in games far too much. I agree that center would be a better position for him, but not ahead of either of the centers who played today. I won't bag Michaels because Teke will get upset (jks mate ) but needless to say there were a few aspects of the team's performance which seem to get repeated week in week out. Im not sure if it's the players, the coaching, the bounce of the ball... but you'd think we can't go much longer without some changes. A few guys in NYC and our Feeder teams are really pushing for selection imo (Russell, Hunt, Barba). We could do much worse than jumping out of the moving car, when the alternative is closing our eyes and hoping it doesn't crash.

I have no allegiance to Michaels nor think he should be in 1st grade but lets be honest some of the nitpicking of his game is just an over exaggeration.

[Titanic Believer]

Statistics seem quite flattering. ie completions etc
Warriors had two tries from bombs. Can these be defended better, is it the lack of skill on the wings or just the rub of the green?

[Big Dan]

if i see Michaels in a jersey next week im going to go give carty a gob full , i have a torn acl and i can jump and defend better then that princess hesus bloody christ.. rant over

Love your passion.

[teke]

Statistics seem quite flattering. ie completions etc
Warriors had two tries from bombs. Can these be defended better, is it the lack of skill on the wings or just the rub of the green?

bombs are lotteries alot of the time. Attacking wingers only need to get their hands in to knock the ball back.

i did notice on a couple of occasions where the storm defenders stood to help their player that was diffusing the bomb.

[Mexican titan]

bombs are lotteries alot of the time. Attacking wingers only need to get their hands in to knock the ball back.

i did notice on a couple of occasions where the storm defenders stood to help their player that was diffusing the bomb.

These are the sorts of plays where I question the quality of the coaching. Time after time we see Meady and Gordon trying to defuse bombs but with little defensive support. I see other teams that have players trying to block runners and occasionally get penalised but at least they are trying to help out the wingers. Quite often I see our wingers trying to take a high ball with only attacking players anywhere near them.

[karnage]

So we e got rid of debt, have a functioning CEO, a decent squad, new assistant coaches and got rid of princey and champion due to their bad influence...

We are running out of things to blame other than the actual issue.

Why dance around the issue?? If we had even a basic attacking structure we'd have won that game by 13+

I hope our team does not allow the scoreline fool them into thinking that that was a good performance. It was not. The Warriors were bottom of the ladder heading into that and stats show that they are the worst team in the NRL (by a mile...) in the last 20 minutes of games.

We have yet another bottom 8 team next week, this time at home. If we drop that the 4 points we missed in this fortnight will cost the team a spot in the finals.

[Titan Fanatic]

Is this entire post a piss take?

haha na not taking the piss.

Just getting sick of watching titans play the same
game each week. As ordinary as I thought most
players were today against the team at the bottom of
the ladder, I guess it's hard to look good playing in a
boring attacking structure.

[Titanic]

Gentlemen, we are boring ... down right boring. We play the same way every week using the same players who make the same mistakes and they are not accountable ... I am so disheartened by today's p1ssweak effort that I couldn't be bothered arguing with much of the stuff written here.

The one-dimensional, endless hit-ups remind me of the 60's playing with a leather ball in the mud with unlimited tackles ... when will management wake up because we are killing the ability of some very good players?

[Mt Smart]

I met a few of your Mob at MT Smart today , good turn out by Titans Fans , most of whom are Kiwi's here.
Even the traditional Boo when the Titans ran out onto the field was half hearted, no one can hate on the Titans.
We had the U20's Squad sitting behind us , they were approached by a number of Warriors supporters during the break and were good enough to chat to people...the players I spoke to were rapt to beat our U20's team / nice lads...very good ambassadors for the club.
I thought your forwards looked flat in the first half / timing was off from dummy half , once the Warriors got a big lead and the rain started pissing down it was game over till Ryan James made it personal...his mates came to the party and it was all on.
He was my MOM ahead of my Warrior picks.
Idris and Taylor are such menacing players when they run straight / should have been our undoing.
Why there weren't more balls put above and behind Manu I don't understand.
Good Luck against the Dragons and for the rest of the season , all is not lost , our team has a horrific Injury Toll as well.
It's a case of grounding it out till the cavalry are back.

[Titan Fanatic]

What was with the deliberate tap forward by johnson? that was a shocking call!

[Mexican titan]

The one-dimensional, endless hit-ups remind me of the 60's playing with a leather ball in the mud with unlimited tackles ... when will management wake up because we are killing the ability of some very good players?

I think that summarises it perfectly.
I have really tried to stay off the sack Cartwright bandwaggon but after the last few efforts and the last two years, it will not be long before I jump on board. I have heard Cartwright state that he will know when it's time to go and that no one will have to tell him - of course what he didn't say is that he would go without being paid out the rest of his contract. If he is on $400k it will cost over $1.5m to pay him out until the end of 2016 when his deal was due to end. Which takes us back to the stupidity of signing a coach for another 5 years. I don't care who the coach is, it is just something you should never do, as it can all go pear shaped so quickly.

[Smakked]

We are so frustrating to watch its getting more and more ridiculous every week.

[Leeroy]

Love reading everyone's comments every week. Sorry I don't post much as have a shocking memory and most parts of our game I like to forget anyway. All the topics are covered, answered and debated by you great people anyway. All I remember from yesterday's game was sitting at Burleigh Bears with my head in my hands wondering what was going on. Keep up the great work I love your passion.

[karnage]

This loss is going to hurt us later in the year, I just had a look at our last 8 weeks. In a nutshell:

- 5 of our last 8 games are AWAY from home.
- 6 of our last 8 games are against top 8 teams (Manly, Souths, Bulldogs, Cowboys, Roosters, Storm)
- Our last 2 games are AWAY to the Roosters and AWAY to the Storm.

It is a BRUTAL ending to the regular season. It is a very long season but losing to the likes of the Warriors, in the form they are in, is a game we need to make up somewhere else.