Great post, mirrors exactly how I feel: Very frustrating losing all the close games. Our 2 losses this year alot of people resorting to blaming the refs when fact is we simply haven't been good enough. Don't become the Roosters forum guys.
Was pulling at his thumb after the play. It looked ordinary. Would have got away with it if he didn't make it so obvious. Got to be a bit more sneaky if you target previous injuries.
I don't condone what Thaiday did, but you have to put some responsibility on the injured player. If you're injured or protecting an injury, you shouldn't be playing. You can't expect the opposition to look after you. In the Inglis recently, it was fantastic to see the Tigers go easy on him, but that was different in that he was injured during the game.
Would we be having this convo if Thaiday was holding hand with someone who didn't break his thumb recently? If not, then I find it hard to agree with this charge.
Having said that, I don't like to see that from players in my team.
Always new they did it but for some reason last night it just really really stood out. Like literally every tackle just working them over. I don't know if they did it more last night or not but I just found it incredibly obvious and frustrating.It's taken you years to notice Melbourne's wrestling?
Rather than a sin bin time penalty, play it like ice hockey and send a player off like ice hockey (a change of possession or score). It lets the ref be more strict without changing the nature of a game.This. To be fair though it happens with most fans of every team. I have seen a few Melbourne fans whinge about the deliberate penalties given when we were scrambling and the few times Vunivalu was taken off the ball and then the Chambers ruling. I was glad we gave away a few more penalties in the ruck when we were defending our line. Too often we don't and let in a try when we could just get set better by giving away a penalty. We have been the least penalised teams in the last few years which although looks good on paper discipline wise it doesn't help you at all. Got to push the boundaries because the refs have shown for years they don't have the backbone to put anybody in the bin. Paul Kent made a good point about the Sharks last week on 360. Somebody asked how were they so quick up on the raiders and he said they are offside all the time. He said they know they might get penalised a few times early but eventually the ref will think to himself geez if I blow about 40 penalties here it is going to be perceived that I am not letting the game flow etc etc even though most teams probably deserve it. It is pretty clever stuff when you think about it. Until people start getting put in the bin it is never going to be fixed. Need to take a leaf out of the Cowboys, Roosters, Storm books in regards to this. They are usually in the top few penalised teams because they push the boundaries
Fox weren't much better Vladmir, Brandy was having vinegar strokes at every Storm play.I feel like Broncos is against the world. Last night storm lay down in the ruck. But nobody care. Everyone just notice what broncos player are doing wrong. 9 commentary team just sucks.
I can't remember the last time that has been a penalty.
To me our defensive gameplan is done on purpose.
It's happening too much for it to not be the plan.
You use less energy by waiting for the attack to come to you which means you are able to hold teams out for longer if you get it right. And by keeping a straight line and not moving up, you decrease the chance for overlaps which was the case a lot of the time tonight when Storm went wide and we had the numbers to shut it down.
I think the reason why we were able to hold out the Storm for so long is because we were waiting for them to come to us.
....but we just can never ever close out games. It's got to the point that if we are up by 2 or 4 with 10 minutes to go then I just know we all blow it and lose the game.....
The way this team has been the last 5 years I'm never confident going into the last 5 minutes 2 tries up...I was watching the game with my dad and said something about how I hate when we are in front by 4 with 5 minutes to go...
Hoping we start to see glimpses of the new attacking structures...How about our attack gameplan. Tackles 1 to 3 are one out hit ups. Tackle 4 is a run from dummy half usually by Boyd or McGuire. Tackle 5 is then a average at best kick from hunt.