This may not be a normal game, and rain is forecast. That said I will still be there on the hill to watch the next generation play their heart out.
Win or not this game will be interesting
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Hope Riki & Toelau kill it tonight. Just seeing how much their debuts meant to them was very moving. Good luck to both of them.
And, ditto for McLean. He had an unhappy NRL debut game last year. Hope he goes well tonight, too.
Thank god we got to 10
Mclean is looking ok as is Riki for his short stint but unless Schneider has an injury he has gone missing and he is out of his depth in first grade.
and why arenāt we rolling the ball into the ingoal instead of these danky bombs?
Dragons are terrible and the 10 flatters them.
Hope Laurie cuts loose.
and hope Leota is Ok and is not an issue with his hamstring.
a big handclap for the crowd who are there in awful conditions!!!
hate to say it but Rikis defence in the second half has just cost us this try.
terrible reads by him.
we had better wake up.
Cleary thought the same and hooked him.
we will need a miracle from here to win this
I had my concerns at half time, and it turns out they were justified. We didnāt have the points in the bank when everything went our way in the first half, and have been out enthused in the second half.
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well its easy to see why our reserve side are getting beat
we were trash in the second half and lost the second half 22 nil
its hard to put into words just terrible and our worst effort in years.
and this rubble face the Sea Eagles next week
MOM was our crowd who had to endure this in terrible conditions.
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Moses off with a hammy
Whispers Edwards has hurt his quad
Season looks on the rocks at this point
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The weather was terrible, the ref was terrible, our 2nd half terrible, and the lighting failed lol.
I thought Lawrie was awful, and showed how much we miss Edwards.
Our forwards played well in the first half, Kenny gave it his all. Smith and Henry for the most part were great, but tired in the end, and showed they are not used to playing 80 minutes.
Not unexpectedly our halves let a bit to be desired, Schneider may be a good 6, but leading the attack left a lot to be desired. After a good game last week Cole once again looked out of his depth.
Hate to say but Ricky didnāt offer much, and Mav looked like he was on debut.
Onwards to next week, but a very disappointing game
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I usually think you are pretty spot of with your assessments SHF, but on this occasion I couldnāt disagree more.
I think in a losing team Laurie was one of the best out there, a lot of pressure we put on Laurie and McLean, which was very much part of the Dragons game plan. I thought they handled themselves very well.
The forwards were terrible in the second half, Lindsay looked super gassed in the last 20 minutes and Henry also looked flat and errors started creeping in.
The halves were not doing their job organising and moving the squad around, something we missed from Luai this week.
We just need to take this onbe on the chin and move onto next week, hopefully with a better mindset (and game plan).
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Panther Pride Man of the Match voting is now open I agree and to be honest i think Laurie tried hard but he was alone.
Cole appears to me as though he needs a great 7 alongside him for him to feel comfortable.
Schneider was impotent as was Cole but one could argue they were because our forwards were just awful but that was in the second half.
In fact in the first half we had dominance and neither Cole or Schneider took control.
If you came from outer space and that was the first NRL game you watched you would think Dragons were leading the comp on that performance. Being down 10 nil and coming out in the second half, running harder and faster and scoring 22 points to nil.
Anyone could see Dragons (excuse the pun) came out firing in the second half right from the kick off when their return of our kick had purpose and resolve and that continued.
we just couldnāt shut them down.
Losing Leota didnāt help but we had enough experience on the park to win that game, we just got embarrassed.
There were a couple of takeaways from the game and players in my view.
Geyer is not a first grader yet and may never be on what we have seen
Riki made two crucial and stunning misses and he is not a first grader as yet and again may never be
McLean showed green shoots but imo opinion lacks size but showed heart and may need longer in reserves to prove his ability
Toleau looked really interesting and his attempt at the 40/20 (which was one imo) showed he has a kicking game from 9 which Kenny does not have and given the weakness we have in the forwards i would like to see him get another go at 9 with Kenny moved to second row.
Henry has upside but he needs to cut this rubbish out of his game and focus on hitting hard and running hard but he needs time to build up his minutes as he also looked gone last night.
Smith has clear ability but he was doing a mountain of work and looks like he may have a passing game which we desperately need from our forwards.
JFH tried but like Smith just ran out of gas.
On the backs i think Tago and Alamotti both were quiet but Tago in particular is now making mistakes and often costly losing the ball when rucking out.
Overall last night showed the very wide gap between our players in the SOO and those injured to who replaced them. The gap is so wide its alarming.
With this news of Edwards perhaps injured and Leota injuries last night this is very troubling added to Nathans injury.
Its not panic stations by any stretch when you measure what we tossed up last night to just last week, but magnifies our weakness in lower grades of emerging players.
You canāt turn what is obvious around overnight, but hope the senior thinkers inside the club are addressing this with the haste it deserves.
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Just on last night and a couple more things stood out in regards to refs.
On the Mclean try, the touchy gave the ref the heads up he went into touch so the ref sent up as a āno tryā and the bunker took an eternity looking for a reason NOT to award the try.
How and or why it took as long as it did is a joke and an affront on the game.
On the Touleau 40/20 attempt it just happened to be the same touch judge who say Mclean go into touch but could see Sloanes foot on the sideline when he was just a few metres away.
why didnāt that go up to the bunker?
it was a crucial moment in play.
also Smith hit Panthers with 6 again calls whilst we were defending on our try line which has now become a āset pieceā from the refs against us.
and the NRL has to do something with āfakersā trying to get penalties by laying down, the NRL has to stamp this out and quickly.
Dragon players tried this multiple times last night most notably Leilua and Flanagan.
It brings the game into disrepute and shows you the class of those who try it on.
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I think the Leota injury threw us a curve ball. JFH, Smith & Henry all played more minutes than they normally would have, which may explain their ineffectiveness in the back end of the game.
I think we also made a mistake with our bench selection. We needed a third big body, not a second utility. Jordan Grant from our NSW Cup team looked good in a beaten team last night. Maybe time for him to have a call up?
I agree with you Mutley.
Before the game I thought our bench looked light and losing Moses as early as we did didnāt help that cause at all. Itās apparent we donāt have a third dominant fwd like we used to in Leniu
Not sure how to describe yesterday. It looked pedestrian.
I thought Laurie and Smith were two of the best.
Sorro has errors creeping in.
Kennyās passing was off last night.
Reminded me of the warriors game a bit, where our discipline was substandard
Refs were atrocious but canāt blame them for a loss.
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We are at times a great side. However, we wouldnāt have beaten anyone last night with a below par performance. Hope they get back on track next game.
Lots of good commentary and analysis here. The plaudits for the crowd should really be for those sitting in the rain. Itās no drama sitting up in the stand, high and dry.
There has been plenty of praise for Turuva this season (and last). But, for me, while he might score quite a few tries, he also seems to let plenty in. I donāt know if it is just his suspect defence, or communication problems with his Centre, forcing him to come in, leaving a sideline gap.
That performance was hard to watch, but it reinforced my concerns for our supposed great depth that I voiced earlier. It reminds me of Manly some years back who seemed to spend all their cash on first grade and had a crap reserve grade team.
We might have missed Leota after he went off, but I recall that he had coughed up the ball a couple of times already.
I agree with the criticism of Tago. No attention to detail. There should be a special punishment for screwing up the play-the-ball. It has to be the ultimate in coach-killers.
By the time that SOO is completed, it seems likely that weāll be back down to the base of the top 8. And so hereās hoping that we donāt cop any injuries to those in the rep side.
Finally, youād have to look hard to find any āindependentā commentator who expressed the opinion that the Dragonās win might be at least partly due to our having 9 players unavailable (Cleary, Yeo, Edwards, Luai, Toāo, Martin, Garner, May, Eisenhuth). That was pretty clear for Ch 9 today, but that should come as no surprise.
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100% SBF, I was carrying on about this at the time, absolute joke.
Agree again and to make matters worse, i often reference their KPIās, he āgave usā 2 or 3 with 5 minutes to goā¦squared up the ledger !! 
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Oāh yer, we were absolutely poo in the 2nd half, no excuses.
If I am IC I am showing the Riki vision from the 2nd half kick off every session, play the man WITH THE BALL, he had no eyes for the ball carrier, only the expected forward to get the ball, it was that obvious the winger just ran passed himā¦Oops 
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There certainly should be no plaudits to the ones sitting in the stands who left early. The punters calling out to them āare you the same ones who left the Grand Final early?ā were spot on.
We are clearly down on troops, and the bench was clearly not ideal, but not too many options with SOO & injuries. Yes, the only big guy in Cup was Grant, but not sure that would have made a difference in place of Peachey.
Too many guys playing much longer minutes led to fatigue, and we are making too many simple errors, but I think IC already knows that.
Now, I should disclose at this point that I tipped 0/5 this week, so what the hell do I know 
We need to win enough games to finish in top 4, or even 6. With our share of luck with injuries in the big games, at this stage, I donāt see a team that we canāt beat when it really counts.
We may not have the luxury of resting origin guys every week as we have in the past this year - thatās ICās call.
Yes, the NRL salary cap maybe has eventually brought us back to the field in terms of depth, but I will still be there until the shouting is done.
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