the 8th stage of grief: are the Titans the real deal? the way they played on the weekend, would they be able to go toe to toe with anyone in the NRL? or were we just shockingly bad
I wasn't going to post in this thread tonight as I am managing my emotions which are raw and damaged from the annihilation on the weekend.
It is not a case of the Titans being good. They were even below average for the first twenty minutes when we held them scoreless and they screwed up time and time again in our red zone. The titans are an average NRL team and have had some unlucky results this year or would be higher in the ladder. But they are not that great and deserve to be about 12th to 14th.
The reason in my mind why we lost was
a) Some dumb positional decisions like
Walker at edge and
Chanel at lock. I blame that at 50% of the reason we lost.
b) We were favourites for the game and the warriors seem to never win games they are supposed to win but crazily play very well as underdogs. The three matches in a row we won were all as underdogs. I suspect the players get too wound up by the coaching staff telling them they must win and then probably CG gets involved with a speech telling them winning is a non negotiable, and the maybe Mohawk shows up at training and he says anything less than winning it unacceptable, . And then something, I don't know what goes through the Warriors heads and then next thing you know they are playing tight, not playing as a team, trying to do it all themselves. IE not in the optimum head space which is being amped for the game but no so amped you have too much adrenaline and can't move or think quickly and I think we get too amped.
I suspect a big reason for the loss is the coaching staff. They have failed to notice we only win games as underdogs and are terrible front runners and have not addressed the fundamental culture at the club which creates this mentality. I also think the coaching staff and CG in particular from watching footage of team speeches do give a lot of speeches which make the players just gulp and shrug their shoulders. Like losing is not an option. We must win this game you are better than the Titans so I expect you to win comfortably instead of respecting the opposition whoever they are whereever they are ranked on the table and respecting them.
The Blackcaps before this recent T20 debacle. used to be ruthless mother fuckers at smashing minnows. England were always losing to Ireland while Jamie How or someone for us would score like 180 and we would post 400. And after the game the Kiwis said we knew they were capable of an upset and have good players so we wanted to show them respect by playing our very best and posting a big total for them to chase.
When do you hear the Warriors talking like that?
This has been going for years. We bottle it against bad teams and play like men possessed against a top team and lose closely and everyone says if we play like that next week against Manly we will clobber them. But we don't play like that next against the mid table team.
We lost against the Titans because of our club culture that we usually, with many exceptions, only win we are the underdogs and bottle it when we are favourites.
