Another disappointment

Afternoon everyone, hope you’re managing to keep cool this Sunday afternoon. I’m doing so by polishing off a few brews while watching Ricky Stuart and co. cop an absolute mauling. Good times.

Well, how about those Dragons? We started off solidly enough, but we notoriously gave away 2 tries in the last 10 minutes of the 1st half, our heads went down, and we never looked like getting back into it. Before the mood gets too sombre around here though, let’s start off with a few of the positives first.

Sam Thaiday had another monster of a game, keeping Ben Creagh very quiet and giving him a couple of bruises he’s likely to be feeling today. He’s been our best this season without a doubt. He should be inspiring those around him, but for whatever reason they are not feeding off it. Gillet had a great game too, with some outstanding offloads. Shame no one wanted to do anything with them. Dale Copley had a solid game, and it makes you wonder why we’ve been persisting with Beale while this guy has been around. Corey Norman made a good 1v1 tackle, saving a certain try to Brett Morris. Unfortunately it proved to be a rarity.

The first try we let in was very soft. A lack of communication seemed to be the problem as Beau Scott sent some weak defence (inc. Norman) skittling and crashed over the line. We responded well, with a good finish by Copley. But this seemed to be all we could muster. A ruthless Dragons side began to terrorise our right side defence. They had a try disallowed which left even the most die-hard Broncos fans scratching their heads. We hung in there, and put up a good fight for about 30 minutes but we couldn’t keep it up.

Soward threw a magic pass to put Morris in the clear. Line breaks happen in rugby league, and our cover defence really should have had this one covered. But somehow no one got close to him except Norman, who really needs to start doing better as our last line of defence. I’m really starting to miss our number 1 from the past few seasons. Not only would Karmichael Hunt have stopped him, he would have pushed him over the line, and danced on his face in the process. Instead Norman seemed to slip, and Morris went straight over the top of him to score and further stake his claim as the best finisher the NRL has at the moment. It was very weak, and even now as I watch the replay I’m still cringing.

5 minutes later they were at it again, finding some depth in Darius Boyd who simply ran straight around a very out-paced Lockyer. Boyd put it on a platter for Morris to score his second of the night. The disappointing part was when Lockyer pulled out of the chase, allowing Morris to run it around under the sticks unchallenged. It was an unforgivable sin from our captain who simply should know better. For mine, it set the tone for the rest of the match. Just like when McCullough did it against the Warriors a fortnight ago. It’s putting up the white flag, and it spreads throughout the team like wildfire. From there it was a no-contest, Waldo was well within his rights to turn the TV off!

Given how hard we seemed to work for the first 30 minutes, it was almost heartbreaking to see us capitulate in such fashion. But I guess we have to look at those first 30 minutes as a positive, and try to build on it for next game. We should be getting 4-5 first team players back for the next game, which will be a massive boost. I'm already going over-time here, so I'll have more on our reinforcements and also some thoughts on Lockyer soon. Until then!