On watching the replay a few more things popped up mainly to do with the second half.
Man the ruck speed at international level is so much slower. no wonder these games become grinders, it can be hard to get a roll on when the ptb is much slower.
It seemed as soon as we would look to be in scoring range or developing some form of attack we made a mistake.
Nearly every complete set we had. It was like good until the last tackle and each one was a WTF moment. We have to come up with something different.
Nothing was countered to attack against the compressed d line. i think we could have taumalolo about 2nd or 3rd man out on a hit up to keep their line honest.
Taumalolo should have come on in the 55th minute. Taupau started well but as soon as JWH came on we lost some momentum. Taumalolo should be a straight swap for Taupau.
The aussies to me started great but they were pretty flat most of the game. from about the 45th min where they got a try of our mistake till the 70th min when they got a fluke try they were average. in fact both teams were just grinding out. We absorbed a ton of pressure and I dont know how we took it and still managed to be just 8 points down. We have the defensive structure and our goal line d stood up a number of times so thats a positive.
I thought for the aussies there back row stood out. Frizell was awesome, hes a great player, Boyd cordner was smart to target
Shaun Johnson on nearly everyone of his runs until he finally cracked him.
Shaun Johnson made 35 tackles for a half thats heaps as opposed to Thurstons 14, tells you how much our edges got tested compared to theirs.
I have to give credit to aussie, our last tackle was always 40-30m out from their try line so a bomb or play through the hands were the only options. They might have some goal line issues though which were masked because we never got close but dugan shoots up alot, foran would throw the cutout pass not sure if leuleuai's the man but their is defintiely points on the dugan fergo side that need exploiting.
Going on to four nations our attack needs an overhaul. we need our halves to look in the mirror and set up our attacking plays. we need better lines from our forwards on hit ups. we need to play wide early and get their compressed line spreading abit. We need another kicking option. thats where martin might have to step in. leleuai to starting hooker will give us the structure we need to get our forwards going with luke off the bench to attack tiring forwards.