Reality Check

Amateur. Abhorrent. Average. All words used to describe that famous round 21 loss to Canberra last year. Unfortunately these words are equally applicable to Monday nights disgrace.

One-eyed fans may argue that the second half showed heart and determination and I'll agree to that somewhat. Sam Thaiday and Ben Te'o were outstanding in the second half with multiple line breaks between them. Our defence as a whole rushed up and closed in on the Raiders. Norman showed again why he is being touted as a future star. Those were the positives.

I've never seen such a disgraceful showing while going forward and holding our line. The left side defence needs to take a long hard look at itself - Beale alone let through 2 tries. Beale in attack was about as potent as Scott Minto in attack. Don't forget the right side - an error from Kemp led to the Raiders second try. Our forwards seem to overlook the fact that to gain metres one must move forward. Denan Kemp's runs from dummy half had a constant horizontal approach which was snuffed out every time.

I didn't give the Raiders much credit in terms of their backline in my last post but they were outstanding. Strong defending, strong backup running. They hit every hole that was presented to them.

Probably the most depressing fact of all is that there was so much dropped ball from the Raiders which we did not capitalise on. Twice in the first 10 minutes they dropped it cold on their own 10m line. Almost equally as depressing was the 5th tackle options - one cross field kick to a soaring Izzy Folau and one bomb that dropped 1m short of the end zone were the highlights. Too often we relied on our running game which clearly wasn't working against the Raiders wall of defence.

This was the reality check we normal face mid-season around Origin time. Henjak's half-time speech gave us a lift but you can't rely on these things against top level opposition. Let's hope the youth learn from this and become better for it.