“We were a bit flat tonight but I thought our defence was our feature,” Bennett said. “If you want to be a quality football team you have to be able to defend.
“And I thought Anthony (Milford) was very good tonight but (halfback) Kodi Nikorima was off the pace - but that is OK, he’s had plenty of good games.”
Wayne must be one of the people who think Taylor needs to come back... :notsureifserious:
Our right side was a bit quiet, especially Roberts, due to Kodi's relative lack of attacking involvement.
In fairness, he was severely targeted by the Dragons (25 tackles with 4 misses "only"), which took some of the spark out of him. Boyd didn't help either, and was again well below his best.
Milford however, thrives with the freedom and ability to take the leading playmaking role. He was magnificent last night!
Our ball control was pretty average at best, and our forwards were a bit too trigger happy on the offloads and fantasy balls (especially Blair), without earning that right with hard runs getting us over the advantage line.
Thaiday and Hunt were pretty good, and certainly helped us make more meters than the Dragons in total, despite the lopsided possession and penalty count, mostly thanks to our 3/4 line, who made 2/3 of our 1500+ mtrs.
Our defense was superb and won us the game. Line speed, scramble and desperation is what you want leading up to the finals. Loved how we shut down pretty much everything they threw at us, as well as the latest Dragons fad (Dufty)... manhandling him regularly.
How we kept their rampaging forwards from getting on a roll, should also serve us well against Parra.
Checcin is a deadset idiot, and probably had money on the dragqueens. I can't explain how else his interpretations of the same offenses was completely different according to which jersey they belonged to.
He tried everything to get the merge back in the game, including ruling a no try on the Oates beauty before going up to the video ref. Maybe he was hoping there would be enough doubt to avoid overturning his call...?
