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Well I am as drunk as last week but I watched this game on Foxsports so I have had a better 'coaches view' - excuse any grammar/spelling mistakes.
Let's get the easy stuff out of the way;
-The ref was absolutely useless
-The ref was terrible
-I hope someone at the game called the ref a wanker on their way out
Now, what I realised from the game is that we have no backline, it's not that we have a bad backline or crap players - we just don't have a coherent backline that can do anything.
We have one of the best line defences in the comp, it was mighty impressive watching the bulls forwards flop on the spot right infront of the line and then have to resort to a penalty. But when it came to our blokes running, it was even less. Our forwards made metres on every run, Sharpe is at his best at the moment and Whittaker had a monster game, but when it went to the backline they could not make a linebreak.
It's the backs job to make a linebreak but they always ran into the players, and when someone did get their arms free there just wasn't anyone there to support them. They could get quick ball from those runs, but again they couldn't break the line.
Now I'm sure anyone who has read any post from me knows my opinion on Mitchell but I will give him the benefit of doubt tonight. So who is our attack coach? Do we have an attack coach or are we using a traditional forwards/backs coaching setup? Is it up to the coaching that there are no players on the offload? Was the gameplan to go for the box kick when we needed to hang on to the ball? What was with the sixes & sevens when we did get quick ball, is it in the gameplan to just throw it allover the shop?
70minutes in it hit me that we might not win a game this year, if we get Pocock & Brown back it can't make that much of a difference to now, because Hodgeson/McCalman/Stanford have been playing out of their skins! If we get Shepherd back next week we can't really expect him to break the line AND run 50 metres against 3 stormers defenders, since they always stack the 22. And then there is Cross, he's had a shocker but do you drop him for Inman? Or let him try and regain his line busting form of old? Or even move him to 12?
I haven't felt this bad since the 07 RWC qtr when France won, and I can't see it getting any better in the coming weeks.
P.S. Please don't take this post as a bashing of the players/coaches/team because that isn't what it's about.