My word is Flat. Flat in attack all night, no depth, no variation. They did not look like scoring after that early try.
The good: Skelton, May, Twal, Hunt and Pole. Turuva tried hard with limited opportunities. And it’s early days, so it’s good not to panic.
The bad: Galvin and Luai haven’t got a combination going yet. Galvin’s short kicking was poor. Seyfarth lacks leg speed to play edge. And the defence. Oh so many missed tackles. Pole still hasn’t sorted out his defence.
Mason still reliably drops a bomb every game
The commentary kept wrapping the Tigers scramble, but three times, Knights players made long breaks through multiple attempted Tigers tackles, and two of those resulted in tries.
one word disorganised
The blame on the field (ie ignoring coaching) sits with Luai for me. His kicking was terrible (multiple tackle 5 kicks not putting ponga back) and he had no attacking highlights in a game were we lose by less than a converted try. He is our million dollar player, that is his role to win that game just as Ponga did his role to win it for the Knights. Very disappointing start from Luai.
Just insane that out two (high quality) winners didn’t touch the ball in a try scoring position aside from the one time Skelton received the ball one on one and steamrolled his opposite. Watching Souths vs dolphins now and these two team just play normal shape and regularly setup sweeping backline plays that result in overlaps and opportunities for their outside backs. Does anyone play a flat attack like us? Why do we think our structure is better after it resulted in 3 spoons? We barely even gave our 2RF’s flat balls in holes at all. Benji has a lot to answer for
One word - conservative
Newcastle won the game by using the ball. We decided not to do that. Very selfish play by Galvin especially in the first half when he bombed a certain try through hogging and that was the difference in the end. We need one leader out there and his name is Jarome not Lachlan.
The depth of our attack (or lack thereof) is really bizarre
More than happy to let JL and LG play eyes up stuff a fair bit, but we need to change things up at times and run with some depth and shape. Make some defenders guess.
Kicked on the 3rd twice I reckonPositives
May was outstanding effort on effort.
Skelton strong carries looked dangerous with ball.
Samuel’s Fainu looked damaging on edgeDisappointments
Secound half kick chase way to many missed tackles
Poor kicking grubbers, Bombs to deep and not contested.
Attack was all one out off the cuff. To many setup plays for nothing. Need to stretch the defensive line from sideline to sideline. Lack of second phase ball.
One word
Ambiguous
Just out and out DUMB‼️‼️‼️‼️
Kicked on the 3rd twice I reckonPositives
May was outstanding effort on effort.
Skelton strong carries looked dangerous with ball.
Samuel’s Fainu looked damaging on edgeDisappointments
Secound half kick chase way to many missed tackles
Poor kicking grubbers, Bombs to deep and not contested.
Attack was all one out off the cuff. To many setup plays for nothing. Need to stretch the defensive line from sideline to sideline. Lack of second phase ball.
One word
Ambiguous
Just out and out DUMB‼️‼️‼️‼️
When the Knights kicked on the 3rd they forced a line drop out. Genius play!!!!!
The depth of our attack (or lack thereof) is really bizarre
More than happy to let JL and LG play eyes up stuff a fair bit, but we need to change things up at times and run with some depth and shape. Make some defenders guess.
Sadly that is a coaching issue.
In memory of Geoff Chisholm (1965-2022)
My one word is: one
meaning it’s only round one,Still missing half our spine. With api and bula back next week hopefully a better performance follows. We all know this was not going to be an overnight fix.
Overwhelmed. We had all our weapons out there, loads of possession and field position and even got lots of calls in our favour but fired blanks!! 😳
Insipid (attack)
or
worrying (attack)
if we can’t score more than 8 points against a Knights team who handed us so much ball, we are in massive trouble. I wish Hunt could play more minutes, he’s the only bloke who bent the line!
One word unimpressed.....neither team played well, a typical fist game of the season.
My one word is deflating. I thought we more than matched them in our meterage gains and our goal line defence has definitely improved but the stats don't lye that our defensive reads were poor with the sheer amount of missed tackles we made. I thought Skelton was our MOTM but Ponga proved the difference in the end. However, it was disappointing that our two big Penrith signing had relatively quite games. Here's hoping that Luai and Galvin can formulate a solid attacking combination sooner rather than later. Perhaps Benji should've given Luai the second trial to practice his craft with Galvin. I do feel as though we were a little hard done by with some of the decisions made by the referee, however, we need to be good enough to overcome any adversity in order to win the game. This game was very winnable as it was against similarly skilled opposition, not to mention it was a home game! Perhaps I'm overreacting but I fear this moment may have already defined our result for the season in us missing the top 8 again.
