Broncos vs, Storm Review

Well, what a game that was. As you'll probably have noticed, the team here at Red Hill Rants weren't confident heading into the weekend's match. In fact, not confident is an understatement. I was convinced that we'd be on the receiving end of a flogging at the hands of our arch-rivals (well, I consider them arch-rivals at least). I'm glad to admit that I was wrong. Let's take a look at what went right and what needs some attention..

Errors

I've come across sounding a bit like a broken record but our enormous error rate has been crippling us over the weeks. We conceded a total of 6 errors on Sunday which is a fantastic improvement. If we can replicate that week in and week out, watch out top 8. The greatest thing to see was the lack of silly errors - the only one from memory was Setu's offload when it clearly wasn't on. It was a mature display from a youthful side.

Completion Rates

A by-product of error-free football is a high completion rate. It's been the other topic I've been harping on about. The Dragon's in the early part of the season set the world on fire due to their high completion rate. Sure they were about as entertaining as watching paint dry but they won their games. Melbourne for the most part also play high completion football and the record shows how well they went, ignoring cap breaches naturally. The more you push your opposition down the field, the more pressure they end up being under. Pretty simple equation but a very telling one.

80 Minutes of Effort

One harrowing trend that has been haunting us in past weeks has been our ability to switch off at the 35th minute and the 65th minute. You could almost set your watch to it. The boys on the weekend played their guts out for the entire 80 minutes. When we let a try in at the start of the second half I started to think 'maybe we
are going to capitulate' but the lads stuck to it and ground out a fantastic win.

Corey Norman and Ben Hunt

A quick word on these two. As you will have noticed, there was a late change to the Broncos line up. Te'o was shifted to the second row, Hunt to Hooker and Norman to Halfback. I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't sold on if this would work or not - I've mentioned the possibility of Hunt at Hooker before but I thought his size would go against him. He played very admirably and may be the solution we need until McCullough returns. Corey Norman was great at no. 7 - a standout was his kicking game. I think it complimented Lockyer's kicking game very well.


Negatives?

I've thought hard about this and I'm struggling to find any negatives from this weekends game. The only negative I can see from Sunday was that we were occasionally guilty of trying to push the pass in some situations. It's hard to blame the lads though considering everything clicked for them. Any potential room for improvement will reveal itself on Friday versus the Titans.

The other negative was Hoffman being injured but reports are that his scans came up okay and he'll be good to go for the Titans match.

Be sure to return on Wednesday for the team announcement and club news.