It's been a few days now....
After several re-watches of the game, I'm ready to give my thoughts without having emotion speak for me.
Although high up, I had a pretty square on vantage point.
I don't think I'm breaking a first news story when saying their offloads and second phase play ripped us to shreds, they were so expansive I'd find it hard to suggest that anyone could've defended against that better. In saying that, we clearly went in with a plan to not over commit too many players to tackles in fear they could find themselves with extra holes in the defensive line to penetrate as they've been great at that all year.
We simply couldn't secure the ball when making our tackles, our defense wasn't bad at all, it just didn't work against their strategy, credit to them as they clearly studied our defensive shapes well going into this one.
I do however have a problem with the length of time they were allowed to lay on us in tackles, they went seemingly unpunished for what would have been numerous set restarts or penalties awarded to us especially coming out of our end, another inconsistency of individual refereeing styles where there's no doubt in my mind under one of the other officials, we would've seen a vastly different outcome and far better territorial field position.
Going up by 4's is never ideal, even more so in such a high stakes game but they were as hard as conversions get and Pompey didn't miss by much, I feel for him as no doubt he's still holding onto that and will do for some time. Reynolds on the other hand, he iced those moments, it's easy to sit here and suggest
SJ would've nailed our kicks but we will never know for sure.
I still have little to no voice after protesting about that pass, well both passes in fact. There's a deeper issue though and I'm not afraid to say it, yes, the passes were ungodly forward but the space they created to put themselves into the position to throw them.....that's on us. It did kill momentum and we rightly should've been starting a fresh set on the 50m line, who knows what would have unfolded after that point....which is hard to deal with, it well and truly could've put us in a position to be down only 6 at 24-18 after we earned the right to be in the grind in the early stages of the second 40.
I honestly feel that for the first time we felt like all hope was lost, it was an unfair knife in the back and 100% deflating, the guys would've been feeling they were still in with a chance up to this point and now that feeling was now all but gone.
The whole stadium felt a shift from that point, I've never been in a position at a game where the opposition fans were shaking their heads at disgust and actually saying sorry, they know how well and truly ripped off we were in that moment.
Leaving the stadium, aside from the odd Broncos supporter who'd had a few too many Milton mango's carrying on like a right plum, it was respectful and quite sombre. I couldn't help but feel bad for their fans in some respects, aside from them getting the win they knew that there had been a great blunder which would overshadow the fact they were the better team and rightly deserved the win, this I truly believe.
We deserved better, the whole of the NRL think we deserved better. I just hope we can put ourselves in a similar position next season, give it another crack and hopefully let the game do the talking and not the headlines in the aftermath.
Aside from the results, what a day.......our fans are something else. Next year is OFFICIALLY "Our Year".