We probably didn't get much luck or many 50/50 calls, but when a team drops that much ball and gives away so many penalties late in a set, they deserve to lose. 

Defence was a lot better but we can’t afford to be making 400 tackles each week,3 weeks of that and we will start to lose confidence. 

Next game against the Sharks is also going to be tough.
I hope we can a win, but I think the Sharks are a better side than the Eels.
We can't afford to make the same number of errors. 

What I am looking for is the same standard in defence, fewer errors, and some improvement in attack.

In fact to win  we need to atleast halve the error rate.

Still early days, it is a long season...

I think I’m at the point of try anything… it might be years of failure… it might be beer… it might be botulism from the Biltong…

After a game like that beer helps...,

I always remember when Matty Utai came into our 2002 side, he turned the season and the next few years around.

He only played because another player was injured. 

Call it the last piece of the jigsaw.we have more pieces and more depth this season but we are still lacking a few key pieces.

We have options at half and in the back 5, that is where we need to experiment. I am happy to try one experiment per week especially in games where the opposition is favourite. 

Spine is tricky because we need to build combinations, but we also need to find the right players or atleast the best options. 

You better go back and read what I posted because I said exactly that "a ton of possession through our poor ball control" but I will say it again the ref did give them a leg up at every opportunity. Their slowing our ptb was entirely different to ours and I didn't "blame the ref" I just stated a fact that we got some shithouse calls. As for the team being shithouse for the little ball they did have they played pretty good. If that's how you feel you would fit in well with the throat slitters over in TK. If you think the ref was unbiased maybe you're following the wrong team. We weren't robbed by any stretch of the imagination but none of 50/50 calls went our way.

Ok here's my take....

Firstly, i was disappointed i couldnt be in Sydney as i knew this would be a sellout and really wanted to be there. Happened to be on Gold coast and watched Titans vs Dragons on my first visit to Cbus stadium -but thats another story.

Back to the Dogs....
Unfortunately we are where i thought we'd be following the trials..in fact we are probably slightly worse. Defence was much better than previous seasons and hopefully thst could be something to build on but our attack is diabolical still.

We really only scored tries when Parra gifted us posession with spilt balls 20-30m out otherwise we weren't going to make that field posistion on our own. That has me extremely worried. It seems nothing has changed in this department. I can only blame the spine, but not Reed, he actually did more than what needed from him -again.

One just had to watch Ben Hunt (and even Flanagan) in motion yesterday to see how he demands the ball and plays eyes up footy.

I have Parra as a top 4 team anyway so its not disgraceful, but really disappointing to put out that performance after our bad showing agsinst the Shsrks in Trial 2. I thought we got our nad gsme out of the way but it seemed like Trial 1 was the abberation instead.

We are building on defence, the aim has to be to keep the standard up.

By the time we got any useful ball in good field position the team was worn our from all of the defence.

Still the attack looked clunky.

On problem was we could not shift momentum coming out of our end.

CC is right, if we can maintain the standard in defence the attack will Iimprove.

Parra had enough ball at our end to score atleast 10 tries, at one stage last in the second half they were only leading us 3 tries to 2.

Still plenty we need to improve, but some of that is cutting out basic errors and execution in attack.

For the 2 tried that we did score Hutch played his role well, Taaffe did OK but any fullback should have been able to throw that pass.

Having rematches the first half, the biggest factor was that Fox was a passenger for most of it.
He should have been taken off much earlier.
If the pass from Taaffe was thrown to a fit Fox, no problem.
Taaffe should have submitted in the tackle on that early dropped ball and should have been better positioned to stop the first try.
The only other bad drop first half was fron Kicks.
The other knockons were contesting kicks, attempting intercepts and scrabbling after loose balls, the intent to try to get to the loose  ball was great.
Parra pretty much completed at 100%.
While Salmon did a lot of great work in defence he also gave away 2 penalties and came up with a bad read. Just needs to be a bit smarter. Fairly ordinary first half from Kicks needs a run of games to work into form,

A couple of unforced errors in the second half, mainly timing on plays and Salmon playing out of position.
A few dumb penalties, some from trying too hard. 
Lots of effort, linespeed was great deep into the match, but the tank was on empty for the last 10 mjns.

Took our limited opportunities well.

Overall I think that the injury to Fox and the need to move Salmon was the biggest factor in the game. Morrin and Famer we introduced too late. I am not sure if the injury to Fox messed up our rotation or if CC stuffed up.

The combination of unforced errors and silly penalties cost us. I would work on the penalties, they cost us possession and field position 
.
While I would not drop any players we lacked a ball runner who could shift the momentum. We need to do a bit more than complete, but I can't fault the effort. 

Good news Kicks just a fine, Foxy no fracture, just soft tissue injury... that only sounds like a few weeks. 

How did the Tits team go with their experienced coach?

They had a pretty good side especially Tino, Mo and Brimson.

So far I think the comp is more even than previous seasons, 

I was happy with Hutch at halfback. IMO him and Reed were our 2 best players though no one from our side really nailed the kicking game.  Presto, Curran, Hughes, King and Mann also very good and likely to be that good every week.

I would like to see more from Burto passing the ball, he has been playing 5/8 long enough to develop a passing game.

If things don't improve, I would try the following FB -Critter,  Centre- Burto 5/8 - Taaffee or Tracey.
If Taaffe is too small to play 5/8 at the start try Mann or Salmon for the first 20 mins.
Taafee is a good passer and runner from what I have seen.

Bench players most deserving a promotion to starting Hughes, Curran and Mann.

Morrin didn't get much game time and didn't make his usual impact, If a player with more size impressed in reserve grade, I would add them to the bench and shift Morrin to 18th man.

However,  our rotation was perhaps impacted by the injury to Fox, Morrin and Farmer didn't get much game time.

KK impressed me in the trials many in defence, his attack was good in reserve grade last year. 

Yes, you've pointed out a number of key plays that annoyed me. 

I blame CC for not interchanging Fox halfway through the first half. He was never going to run out his injury and for a team that has more utility player than you can poke a stick at, its pretty poor that we couldnt adjust. He was a lisbility out there and crucified our left side attack for more than a quarter of the game. Very poor from CC given Kiraz was in the team and could have easily moved to wing with Mann at centre. 

Im baffled as to why Gus and CC went after so many utilities yet no idea how to use them in the team.

I’ll say it again just for shits and giggles. 

He is a young coach and not taking off Fox was a mistake. 

I still think that our defence was pretty good considering we made 400 tackles and the Eels had something like 50 tackles in our red zone.

So CC is good at coaching defence and seems like a good man manager and motivator. Some other aspects of his coaching style may need some work. Mainly interchange decisions.  Jason Taylor is coaching the attack and given that we had limited opportunities it was hard to judge. 

Coming off our line needs more thought, Burto needs to kick long early in the set or we need to move the ball more.

That last bit. It’s so obvious that we need to move the ball well and kick long. But a few of our sets last night we just hit the ball up one off the ruck for a whole set. 

I agree on losing the ruck.

The Eels were a bit more successful at holding us down early in the game and the ref was reluctant to buy in.

Hughes and Farmer also only totalled 48 mins. We need to think about starting Curran even though the work rate and mobility from Salmon was excellent at the start of the game.

While he is suspect in defence I would be tempted to play Skelton... we just need more ability to make yards and break tackles.

I am hoping that Patolo can get fully fit and press for NRL selection, also that Hughes and Farmer can fet fitter and play longer minutes.

So far I think that this season is an improvement on last season and the squad is better balanced. 100% completions from  the Eels deep into the game also made it tough. 

We need more posession than the opposition and we need to move the ball to win. I've never seen a game where a smaller pack wins with 41% possession.  If was actually worse than that for a lot of the game.

Anyway it is round 1 of 26, rule a line and work on week 2.

Happy with the team.. the spine needs looking at but the daggers are out after a round one loss where we saw very little ball..

Don't say shit like that, you might get accused of blaming the ref.

It’s not about the ref favouring any team. It’s a losers excuse. Teams that blame refs continue to lose. 

All teams test the ref to see what they can get away with the ruck is very subjective, I am sure that the ref is aiming to be fair to both sides. But sometimes one side has a bit more success. 

Some of the flat Parra passes were very flat,  and they probably got away with a couple there.

But that isn't why we lost.

The bounce of the ball was an even bigger factor 2 kicks that seemed to be going dead kicked up with a nice high bounce an eventually resulted in try's. Not so much the first Parra try, but the bizzare sequence of events containing the strip on Hughes. We were very lucky that Mann touched it, but that ball was heading dead before the bounce.

Any finally the injury to Fox.

I would sum it all up as - just not our day.

What I hoped to see was grit, more organisation in defence and the players putting in all that they had. The defence was even better than I expected, hut the dropped balls and penalties conceded were a disappointment.

Some of our players also below their best form, but the effort was there until they ran out of fuel.

Compounding the Sharks game is the short turnaround after a draining defensive effort, the NRL wasn't meant to be easy.

There will be afew games through the year where the other team plays at a level equal or worse than us and we will win afew of those games.

But i still can't see us gaining field position without adequate halves. Burton is a lost cause. He had his 1 good game against the sharks and wont have another for about 4 more games. He was shown up by Hutchison again last night. 

I cant wait till get Hutch at 6 and Sexxy at 7. 
As much as i like Taaffe, if it means pushing Burton to left centre and Crichton at FB, with the above halves, id take it in a flash. 

Very rarely do i blame refs in any sport.
I unfortunately had to watch the game with no volume yesterday so not sure what the ref interpretations or commentary explanations were.

It did look as though ee got the raw end of the stick on 50-50 calls but they coin flips. If you eant to be a good nrl team, you need to play in a way that you can win with 40% of the 50-50 calls.

Its blunders that are hard to take, i don't remember and blunders in that game. I agree tyat blsming refs for your own team inadequacies is loser mentality. 

Focus on improving your team, not the refs

Geez what has happened to my phone?
Just about every word i type gets mispelt

That bandwagon you’re after is over at The Kennel with the kids, there’s a seat for you.

As for that experienced halfback, well as Gus has noted they’re all 30+, some by quite a way, and won’t be leaving their current club any time soon… or ever… except maybe Hunt to the GC.

So what we should do, actually what we can only do, is scour the NSW cup, Flegg and Matt’s and identify the next most likely prospect(s). Like for eg: Joseph O’Neil and that other young bloke Mitchell Woods from the…

… Bulldogs.

I don't think Hutch is that bad especially for a team like ours that currently needs to graft for wins, in attack and defence he is very involved.

Kicking game isn't his strong suit, I don't think Sexton is better, Reed is OK, but Burton is the main man and isn't in peak form.

The club signed the best players we could get, we have a lot of depth but are lacking a bit of quality and combinations.

The coach is trying to pick the best 17 each week and the players are putting in.

We need to graft for our wins, especially the first few and we might need some luck 
.
The idea is that we don't rush the talented young kids and that they come into a competitive side with standards.

Gus sure tried hard to get more size in the middle, rather than a top line star we have signed 3 fringe NRL props.

At half and fullback we also have guys trying to own an NRL position.

The coach can't flip a switch and instantly make them better players, they need to work hard on improvement.

Averillo can't make the Fins side that got beat 43-18.

Looks like old man Bennett picked the right side. 

I can’t see  Averillo kocking the Hammer out of the fullback position.

Our club is one where he could have nailed down the fullback position.

I'll watch the highlights Bennett would not be happy with 43 conceded.

Currently we can’t do much. But I would be looking at Townsend. Being dropped I would hope the coaching staff are keeping an eye on that situation. Along with LoLo. Package deal would be ideal. And those two would turn our club around. 

Townsend is off contract, but no guarantee that we will be able to sign him. He played this week's game for the Cows.

We aren't throwing the Leagues club at anyone.

Teams coached by Des and Bennett containing a pretty good squad of players in particular better forwards also lost this week.

Our halves are lacking in the  kicking game, Gus is making the calls and I am sure that he knows what we need.

I am pretty happy with this seasons recruitment, the problem was that we have had to turn over the entire squad since 2021 and needing to sign a lot of players we have only signed a few elite talents, Buro, Reed, Kicks and Critter none of them a prop or a halfback.

I have a hunch that next season we will be turning over a small number of players and targeting quality in key positions.

So we might sign a half and a prop. Sexton,  Knight and Patolo are off contract and need to force their way into the NRL side. I give all 3 particularly Sexton a chance, 
 
Tetevano signed a 1 year deal, I will be surprised if we extend him. 

I am sure Gus has this in hand as is not rushing into panicked decisions. 

Micko, I do see your point of view. How I saw the game is that the slime were allowed to hold down after the tackle a little longer, were allowed to advance the defence a little earlier therefore smothering any chance of an attacking move the 50/50 calls just didn't go our way, the super flat passes were let go yet we got pinged for one or two I didn't say the ref won them the game, parra played better. What I am saying is the subtle decisions didn't stifle their game flow and therefore gave them the opportunity to play better. And we were not good enough to overcome the setbacks.