Such an important game for us if we're any hope this year. A loss means we are no hope of a top 2 finish
and quite possibly have to play brisbane at their cheat stadium. the difference is phenomenal. if it's in sydney the roosters almost definitely win, if it's in suncorp the broncos almost definitely win.
I honestly think we can win our last 3 games. I know we don't ever beat Cronulla but we are playing much better than they are
Anyway that was an outstanding game. We lost but it was by far the best performance of the season. We played 80 minutes for the first time and we really only let in one try as the penalty try was bs. Plus, there is no way the referees can say that we infringed the ruck/ deliberately slowed down the ruck 7-8 times but Melbourne of all teams did only 3.
Yeh can definitely win our last 3 games, I just don't see Brisbane dropping a game from now. Especially considering they've got 2 home games left where they can scatter sand all over the field. Yeh real promising performance with Cordner & Friend coming back in. I thought we played the better footy & our defence was exceptional. Like you said only conceded the one linebreak in 80 minutes. Robbo is going to have to make a big call on Watson when Gordon gets back. I'm guessing he will stick with Gordon I just don't know if it's the right call. I've given up on trying to figure out how they police the rucks these days, apparently we were 3 times worse than the Storm. Yet there were so many blatant re-grips & defenders peeling off in multiple tackles every set that just used to be black and white penalties. You'd find more sets on their line where Melbourne were off-side than sets where they were onside, just seems like they're not fussed with policing the 10m this year either outside of maybe blowing 1 or 2 pens early in the game as a 'warning'. Then there's the current state of play the balls where they'll pull one up a game (in this case Guerra's) and then ignore another 50 just as bad or worse... just seems like a huge drop in standards from the refs this year across the board.
I honestly can't remember the last time we played for 80 minutes. Friend did let us down at the end though, should've been smarter than to go the short side and just kick it into touch. Watson was fantastic today but you pick Gordon every day of the week IMO. I still don't trust Watson under the high ball. Yeah that Guerra play the ball pissed me off. Sutton was right on top of the play the ball too plus Slater did the same thing 5 minutes later.
well i would've rathered manu/mitchell, that stupid rotation with matterson ruined so many chances of having mitchell get a chance in attack and it was only luck that they didn't get much chance to fully expose and turn around matterson in defence. And you'd pick Gordon at the moment but if Watson does that another 3-4 times in a row I'd drop Manu and put Gordon on the wing, if Watson starts to fuck up and get exposed you can easily sub him off and shuffle aubusson to the centres.
That was one of the best games of the season imo. Not so much in terms of quality but the feel. Mind you there was some extremely high quality footy at times too. Melbourne were well off their best in large part due to Easts' style of play. I think you'd have to be proud of their defensive effort. Mitchell should've been binned. Purely for the pro. foul. Then you add in the fact that Sutton was already blowing the pea out of the whistle and you've got a bloke who does a shoulder charge 10 minutes later. From the second Ferguson's ad-lib kick went dead I knew Melbourne were gonna win. The first time Easts lead they held it for all of three minutes. You could feel a try coming after the charge-down.
Yeah the shit thing is about that charge down is that had we had just gotten a different bounce, Watson was a chance to pick that up and run away to score
Yeah going in I didn't mind it, having two big defenders at centre in the wet especially after what Manu produced last week made sense. However, you're right had Manu been on that wing instead of Matterson, we were a good chance to score
Not too disappointed in losing to Penrith given the effort the Cowboys put in again with severe injury toll. I feel had Morgan not gone off we may have gone on with it but their effort was valiant.
Put it on Sportsbet. They have a special if a team is up by 12 at any point you get paid out as a winner and there's no limit.
