My concern is the way our team has played very ordinary teams into form. Roosters, Rabbitohs and Cowboys were struggling until we played them. Makes next week’s match with the lowy Dolphins (who are now above us on the table) a worry.
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Anything is still possible, although the way that things are going, we may have to do it from the bottom half of the 8, which won’t be easy.
Perhaps another NRL record. 
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I don’t know what’s wrong, but it looks like everything is off.
In no particular order:
- Discipline in general is way down.
- Everyone seems off and disjointed
- Tago needs a spell or something. In prior seasons his rushing-up defence was somewhat offset by our rock solid defence. This year it’s no where near as solid and not doing us any favours.
- We seem to lack the punch forward and everyone is getting fatigued more. Probably linked to lack of dominant possession and discipline
- Something about Cole and Mcleans don’t look ready for first grade or at least the Panthers way (physicality wise). I’m confused about whether I think Cole is the right #6. Maybe give Talagi a shot at #6 and Cole at #14. Laurie can go.
- Laurie… I thought Peach was bad enough in the rocks & diamond bucket…
- Edwards: Star player, but I’m worried our defence is too impotent and whilst I expect more from our defence once he’s back, he won’t fix it entirely
- Hope Kenny aint out for long
- Please give Talagi a go and not Schneider at 6.
- Probably missed To’o and Edwards starting sets strongly
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In 2019 it took until about half way through the season before Ivan finally realised he had to give some of the kids a good crack at first grade. I would like to see Talagi starting, and Luron Patea on the bench. Even though cup didnt get the result, it seemed like he was barking instructions and leading the side around the field.
He took it upon himself to try and get the side back into the game with strong carries, and even a few steals of his own.
I can’t see him being left out of the team for too much longer.
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Horrible - Our forwards need to have a long hard look at themselves. Does Smith think he’s a halfback…what is with the stepping and shit, run straight and hard and catch the friggen ball !!
Papalli, so far he’s proving me WRONG, I thought he would be the buy of the season, other clubs are laughing at us…he has 0 impact.
I’m pissed off at the refereeing, they were not the reason for us, we were really bad, but it doesn’t help when the ball has been in play for 10 minutes without a break, this has been our game plan for years now, they kick it dead, we run to the 20 for a 7 tackle set and are held up by the ref listening to the bunker about something that happened 2 sets before…at least 30 seconds of the Cows getting their breath back for someone to go on report - WTF
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As I had been away for a couple of rounds & saw little of the games in Rd4, I’ve waited until seeing all the games this week before commenting.
In general, the standard of NRL is meeting the NRL’s plan to bring all the teams down to lowest common denominator. The games are of a poor playing standard, but they are happy it seems as they want all teams to remain in the hunt for the 8 as long as possible as that will keep the fans interested longer. They clearly have sought the game officials assistance in lowering the standard as low as possible.
BOT ie this weeks game. It is clear that we are making too many errors, poor decisons & just missing too many tackles. Easy to say, but not so easy to fix.
I fear our poor execution is causing us to lose our fear factor of the past 5 seasons, giving other teams more confidence in beating us. Part of our game was that the opposition were always under pressure, “knowing” that they are going to struggle to score & causing them to make mistakes, which puts even more pressure on them. We are now making the mistakes, putting the pressure on ourselves.
The display on Fri night was ordinary to say the least, but I didn’t see anyone not trying. Perhaps trying too much was the problem. It’s often been pointed out that players sometime try and solve a problem that didn’t really exist until they did try to fix something that wasn’t there, which then created a problem. Also, players try to make up for others by doing something that is not their job.
As bad as the situation looks, if Tago didn’t have his brain fart on that poor cows kick, and Casey had passed the ball, we would be 2-3 & the situation would be looking a lot brighter. We are paying well below our best, and are still finding ways to ‘almost’ win.
I have learnt do not second guess IC, but I didn’t understand Papalii starting for Smith nor our 3/4 line, but we have a couple of troops key to our success coming back this week, albeit with a couple more out.
Onwards and upwards. As has been said by others, if we are in the finals it’s a whole new ball game - we just need to win enough games to be there.
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