Mannering for me, but Benry could be easily. Honorable mentions to Martel and
Shaun Johnson.
Good to see Martel step up finally, here's hoping it's a sign of things to come. I don't really want the 'offload king', just someone who's making an impact and looks like he wants to play.
Really unfortunate injury to Little Ted, but I reckon it shows up a problem we have with inadequate fullback cover if something happens to Locke, which is always on the cards given the way he usually plays.
Godinet made a couple of crucial mistakes at the end as fullback. He may have played it before, but looked completely inadequate there. Like Koni, he appeared to be trying too hard to do something great instead of concentrating on doing everything right in a phase of play that required steadiness and control instead of highlight reel footy. Errors resulted, turned over possession, and made the game way closer than it needed to be.
One thing that's taken me by surprise is how I'm becoming less and less impressed with Lowrie - can't see that he offers up anything that any of our other second/back row forwards don't, and seems to be good for at least a penalty a match. He's solid, and that's it really. I'd much rather see us get some big loose unit who's going to make the opposition wishing they'd pulled a sickie.
Manu went much better than I expected - a few moments that needed to be better thought out, but good in general play. Needs to go to ground to avoid being pushed over the sideline, and still needs to work on tackling near our own line... he held off Idris nicely to stop the pass to the wing, then just stood by while Jamal barged over.
I was tempted to write that this was a much improved performance from us, but really it wasn't - we did pretty much everything we've been doing since round 2, with the only difference being that we did it
properly. Same approach, same plan, but with the added bonus of having that plan carried out correctly (heart in mouth, last minute fuckups aside).
This made me really happy, as it shows that the coach has had the players basically implementing the same plan all year, and they've steadily picked up on it, with the result that only mistakes will keep us out of matches now. I'm even tempted to put the mockers on the team and say we're going to get on a roll now.
