One line break in the whole match, wow, that’s very poor.
I wonder if last night was a case of bad coaching or a case of players reverting to deeply engrained bad traits. I hope it was the latter because this side looked nothing like the offloading and attackingly minded one of the last month.
That may have something to do with the quality of teams we played. A genuine half playing halfback will help. I think Turpin is a good young hooker, who can fill in at half when required but his time at half should end with a fit dearden.
I'm not sure what is going on in the head of Darius Boyd but we need a leader out there and he has not been it.
I hoped he would lift both himself and the team with the kind of direction a senior player of his Ilk, who has done it all can do. After a brief moment of hope, where he shined in a game or two, he has struggled.
I have been reluctant to join the hyper critical nature of Boyd and macca (whom I still believe is a quality player, albeit aging rapidly) because both players are great club men in their time and have had games where their efforts have lifted the younger players, but in Boyd's case, he has shown he can no longer compete on the field, at least at 5/8th.
Perhaps there is a spot there in the centres where he was once a stalwart in his younger years, but that is it.
I feel sorry for him because he is trying, despite what many believe, but for whatever reason he can't seem to put it together. If in form and able to justify his spot he would be glue to hold these young players together, but he isn't and can't.
This club has found itself with a bunch of young players, many some of the brightest hopes for the future a club could hope for, left rudderless, without direction, and with an overtly complex strategy, easily broken down with the absence of key personal, either through form, injury, or a lack of retention in recruitment.
How can we solve it? To me it comes down to looking at the players we have and recognising their strengths and weaknesses. Kicking in general play is one. A fullback who can kick is handy, but genuine general play kicker in the halves is a must. We need a leader in attack though as well and Milford just isn't it. That leaves an obvious deficiency that isn't easily solved without going to market. Since it won't be solved in the short term we need to look at how we approach games.
Minimising the exposure of our weaknesses seems to be a fairly sensible strategy but seems to have eluded our coaching staff.
We should be using our forwards to dominate field position early and wear our opponents down. We do need to take risks, just not with our backs.
Our game should emphasise taking advantage of offloads through our spine players, playing field position ahead of possession to limit our kicking deficiencies, and using the backs sparingly except to aid the forwards in our own halves, and nailing our opponent only once we have worn them down.
