One word: Happening. I saw the future and the improvement in the side. Luai & Latu combination works. The side looks good. Came close to beating on of the strongest teams in the competition. Won the second half 12-0. This team is going places, it’s happening. All three Raiders trys were a result of the Seyfarth/Mason defensive failures. Seyfarth doesn’t trust Mason and you can see why.
Richo meter: Poor. Vast improvement but still a lot of work to be done. Immediate depth is still a major issue.
Heath is learning & will get better, there’s no doubt about that. He has potential for sure but right now is finding defending in the front line difficult. Latu will start next game. As to the tries conceded I think for the first try Alex didn’t trust his inside man, Twal, to deal with Papalii so misses his man Tapine. This was an awful decision by Alex and an absolute gift to the Raiders. I love Alex’s effort out there but that can’t happen so early in the game against such an in form team. But overall I think it was the kicking game of Fogarty, long kicks making us play out of our own half most of game, and the Raiders completion rate, their patience & willingness to back their defence that won them the game.One word: Happening. I saw the future and the improvement in the side. Luai & Latu combination works. The side looks good. Came close to beating on of the strongest teams in the competition. Won the second half 12-0. This team is going places, it’s happening. All three Raiders trys were a result of the Seyfarth/Mason defensive failures. Seyfarth doesn’t trust Mason and you can see why.
Richo meter: Poor. Vast improvement but still a lot of work to be done. Immediate depth is still a major issue.
One word is Fainus, i used this word early last season and I'm using it again now, all three of them looked damaging both in attack and defence. Latu's defence was off the charts, heavy first contact, puts his body in front and leads with his shoulder. I will say with all confidence that if he played 80 we win that game in a canter. Luai and samuela combo looks to have clicked....the issue with that game is we lost our heads trying to run down the raiders, in the end when they review the game they will see we had all the time and ability to do it, just needed to structure our attack better and show more patience.
@lorenzo Does that mean coaching is the issue does for me . I do not think there is much reviewing post match at all , this team has absolutely no idea what to do in the red zone as last night if there was any doubt proved it . Marshall needs an experienced professional offensive coach immediately!
@russtutty63 Mason has the intent to defend unfortunately his issue is he lacks the technique he will not get better without help in this regard ..this can be taught again back to coaching where is it !! The lack of overall coaching is comical TBH..
@kenny4517 I think you could rein it in a little Kenny.I know it’s frustrating to go down by a small margin,but automatically seeking the scapegoat in Benji is pretty ordinary,especially in reference to his having a sook.In all fairness,I believe our coach has been emotionally mature and very realistic as to our progress and shortcomings.Benji Marshall is no sook.He has a team that is without doubt putting in and totally invested.
It's an interesting question, what I know of Benji is he is a pretty stubborn bloke, now you could see that as a bad thing or a good thing. People are complaining that we should have played the first half like we did the second, chance our arm, throw the ball around etc..Now if we want to jag a few more wins, maybe that's the way we go, however will that style work for the full 80 mins. I think Benji has a plan, and that is to earn the right to throw the ball around, and you can only do that if you play a more grinding style to tire your opposition middles and edges and get into the game. Where this is currently not working is that we are giving up too much of a lead, and why is that the case, my take is discipline, however more impactful is the fact we have an issue on our right edge in defence, it was there with Galvin and Seyfarth and it is still there with Mason and Seyfarth. Now it's not all on Seyfarth, however he is the common denominator, go back and look at all tries scored against us and I'm fairly certain the right edge is the culprit in 80% of them, even the ones scored on the defensive left are usually because a break was made through our right side. Latu will help plug that hole and its also probably why they targeted KPP who is a right edge specialist. Benji is sticking to a plan and I applaud him, I'm sure he is frustrated we are not getting those close wins, however he is stubborn in his game plan and I believe that you need to build up that muscle memory of the grinding game in order to win a premiership or finish top 4. He lived the flash in the pan 2005 win and how quickly things devolved. I think Benji is in it for the long haul and wants to set up a team that is successful for a number of years.@lorenzo Does that mean coaching is the issue does for me . I do not think there is much reviewing post match at all , this team has absolutely no idea what to do in the red zone as last night if there was any doubt proved it . Marshall needs an experienced professional offensive coach immediately!
Take a look at the 3 tries they scored against us, one was a bad miss by Mason on a kick return, the other was Tapine strolling through a massive hole untouched between Mason and Seyfarth and the third was Jed Stuart going through our right side with flick passes and poor hits in defence the last was a nothing kick that could have easily been defused by Skelton (I may have them in the wrong order). However most of our games play like this, its infuriating, however it can be fixed and i think Latu and KPP lock down that right side for us.
One word- Seyfarth
if Benji keeps him in first grade I have grave concerns for our right edge defence in the short term and Benji’s coaching career in the long term.
Wests Tigers Podcast - Talking everything Wests Tigers!
My one word; closer.
Again, closer to a good win but we're also getting closer to a 4th spoon...
I know we're still short a few quality players to hit the tipping point where we start to win instead of losing, but for everyone's sake I hope there are some wins in our near future because 'close' is not good enough in the NRL.
Something else that is very obvious playing some teams is that a lot of teams spend most of the game playing up to the ref: hands in the air at every play the ball, staying down after every graze to the head. Canberra did this all game and Pole literally cops a head butt and he just plays on. I don’t want my team to be milkers but you are playing at a serious disadvantage if you don’t try and manipulate the ref like many teams do
