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Western Force have gone down 18 - 23 against the Waratahs in Perth tonight. 15 unanswered points in the second half should have been enough to see the Force maintain momentum and upset the tahs, but it wasn't to be. We rather had to settle for a single bonus point for losing by less than 8 points (our 3rd for the season)
Good news from the night was seeing Sheps pull an 80 minute shift without injury - he was handy with the tactical boot too. The locks 'n loosies were tight as always, front row struggled a little, but didn't embarrass themselves and the backs did their job. Whilst there were a few clangers which may or may not have turned the game, all in all it was a team loss.
For mine, I felt pretty much the same as I do when we draw, which indicates to me that we didn't entirely suck, but we let something that should have been ours slip away. again ...
What do you reckon?
To summarise: 'tahs suck, we get 4 points for the bye next week and then we're up against top of the table Stormers.
Bring it on.
Dear Lord, if you give us back Johnny Cash, we'll give you Justin Bieber.
Angrysad so this is going to be allover the place;
After the 'tah player got a yellow (Foley IIRC) the backline became deep, and they managed to actually make metres, so why did this happen only after the yellow? The entire first half they were flat as usual and weren't going anywhere.
Receiving kickoffs - what the bloody hell happened there! You'd think they were a second tier NPC team with how badly they were 'attempting' to take the kickoffs!
Ma'afu - ???????????????? I really need someone to explain why he is in the XV, let alone 22. We have gold on one side of the frontrow, and rubbish on the other.
Harvey - I thought he actually had a good game, but he needs to spend a few days on a bike non-stop to work those short twitch muscles! Every time he tries to step he just stops on the spot and gets tackled.
Cummins - 13 is his position.
At the moment we are basically the blues with a very good pack. Lots of potential but it isn't coming off in the backline, and I don't think a decent specialist flyhalf would actually fix it at the moment.
For me, tonight really exposed how slow Harvey's distribution is (catch, step, pause, decide) and I can't recall him threatening the line in any meaningful way. Very disappointing.
I went to the game. The first game I've been to this year.
They always lose when I watch them. (told you TG).
I am very sorry. I will not go to any more home games, nor will I watch their games live on the telly.
Ok here we go:
Harvey is a decent place kicker, but his kicking in open play, and his general play at 10, is very ordinary. How sad that we have to select him to retain a kicker. His passing was so predictable and telegraphed, he either sent it along the line, or waited for a split second to send it along the line anyway, where the 12, 13 or whoever he passed to got completely smashed. Oh, and he's slow.
Shep continues to take poor options. Instead of taking the man on when he collects a high kick at the back, he passes (at least once to the slowcoach Harvey), or boots it in the air AND NEVER COMPETES FOR THE BALL. Its like he's afraid to take the tackle. When someone else gathers the ball at the back, instead of screaming for the ball to be passed to him, he screams for it to be kicked! (then doesn't compete)
I have real mixed feelings about that game. Was really tight in the first half. We showed great character to keep them out in the last 10min of the first half. Then we let in that faarking soft try just after halftime. Then we play sparkling rugby continuing to build pressure. Then we take the foot off the throat, CONTINUALLY GIFT THEM BACK POSSESSION (which they are just good enough to retain) and lose all the momentum.
If the kicking was not part of RG's plan, he should severely sanction the culprits by dragging them. If it WAS part of his plan, he really is a muppet. Cos' we are such a better team when we build pressure through the phases.
How good is Mafi?! How good are our forwards?!
WHen is Stanley going to fire?
Just imagine how good we would be if we even had ONE of the following in our team - Halangahu, Barnes, Horne, Ashley-Cooper.
Its been groundhog day for 7 years....
Yes I have
And I'm sorry about that too
I did see a handful of games they've won - that first one at Subi was memorable. And a couple of others that should be, but aren't memorable...
Bollocks! I thought we were going to win that one.
But what did they do? Kick the bloody ball back to them.
I havent watched the game on fox yet but I can tell you Harvey is slow and his out off hand kicking pathetic.
I would love to know his kick statistics.
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I'm just going to mention 1 thing... (some of you may of heard me in the terraces) But some of these EWF players need to take a good hard look at themselves and wear the jumper with pride plus pride of representing WA.
In the 1st half we played absolute sh1t, no matter what any one says to me, I saw us play the worst tonight in the 1st half since 'adam was a cowboy'... just the re-tah'ds didn't know what to do either and played poorly, we could of been blown off the park in the 1st half if the tahs played to there ability... I dont know what our ability was, a glimer was there in the 2nd half.
We play like that against the stormers, they will be able to declare after 30 minutes.
I dont really give a sh1t who our coaches are and how good there CVs read. but I'll say 1 thing with backing of every Western Force member since day 1... GET A F***N ATTACKING COACH IN THE RANKS. and we could have a shot, we cant expect RG to be manager - coach - attack coach - and every other bloody position in the back office.
The Force's attack always seems to be better in the second half than the first half- by which time we are chasing the game.
It seems to go:
1) Try to attack with width and speed.
2) Fail to get anywhere through knock-ons, predictable passing, or poor kicking after we've run out of ideas.
3) Go back into our shell and kick anyway all possession. Badly.
4) Concede 10-15 points.
5) Realise we won't win the game unless the whole team puts in 110% and we actually put a few phases together.
6) Do so and put enough pressure on the opposition to win a few penalties and bag a few tries.
7) Finish the game well but still lose by 1-5 points due a few moments of ill discipline and the mountain that we had to climb to get back into the game.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
Its funny you say that Quins, Im the same been to every home game (bar 1 or 2) and from my memory we only win 1 or 2 games every year at home, we have the reds this year, so we can now either choose the rebels or lions to win the other game, give up thinking we'll win 3 or more....
Can't score tries if you don't have the ball. You don't have the ball if you keep kicking it away. If you keep kicking it away you can't score tries. QED.
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Pretty gutted after their effort last week. The Tahs had nothing over us. If the Force had shown the same character as against the Chiefs it would have been 18 - zip.![]()