What a disappointment. The score line doesn’t show it, but for good parts of the game I thought we were the better side.
There were good individual performances – going by Fantasy scores
Shaun Johnson was the top performer for either side, and there were very solid outings for Mannering (of course), Bodene Thompson (I was impressed by his ball handling skills), Hoffman, who had a better game than last time, and
Lisone, who seemed to me to have a better chance of making line-breaks than most of the other young forwards. While neither
Maumalo nor Bunty ended up with much of a Fantasy score, you can see the potential. On the downside, an Origin player like Lillyman isn’t having the impact he should, and Manu sadly made virtually no contribution at all.
What went wrong?
Yes, you can credit the Bulldogs for good defence, and for taking their opportunities, give them that. And we were missing
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, which likely made a difference. But when it comes to things we can control, we need to look at two things.
One is we’re back to the empty cupboard when it comes to set offensive plays. We’ve all spent the past few years watching players crab sideways in front of the opposition defence for want of anything better in the playbook. And players don’t know what their mates are going to do next. Yeah yeah yeah we’ve prioritised defence and holding the ball and being error-free and all that good stuff, but someone on the coaching staff needs to turn their minds to something other than “Well Shaun will dance his way through” or “a miracle will happen”. Is there an offensive playbook? What’s in it, if anything?
And the other is the “let them come to us” defensive line. We’re conceding five or six metres a tackle by going forward a couple of metres, stopping, and letting the opposition have seven or eight metres unopposed. I suppose the logic is that the defence gets set and it makes it harder for the opposition to make line breaks, but it isn’t working. We’re gifting free metres to the opposition, most noticeably last week against the Storm who had quick play the balls and ran hard, but tonight too.
Ah well. it's early days, and we have the talent to make the eight and beyond. But it's starting to look like a tougher season than I would have hoped.
