As i mentioned on the TK....dont pay much attention to the misd-tackle stat. It is useless to look at it on its own.

You can have 5 miss-tackles 1 on 1 near your tryline and leak 5 tries for 30 points, or you can have 55 miss-tackles (supposedly) and only cop 2 tries -like last night.

Penrith players have a habit of poking and probing their runs into the defence looking for an opening. This usually drags 3 or maybe 4 defenders into the tackle. Some of them drop off and it gets counted as a miss. Its a useless stat. 

We did everything right defensively and frustrated them. It was abit of a lapse in concentration on the spilt ball that led to To'os try but you can see in his celebration how much relieved they were to finally crack us. Havent seen Riff rattled like that for a long time.

Game was lost in attack. Not too dissimilar to Souths game and Storm.

We can carry these halves against half the competition and win. But against better opposition who can match us in defence, we need more creativity. 

Ive been a supporter of Hutch, but he was clearly playing to instructions and told not to run the ball. He passed well before the line and attack was easy pickings. Taaffe is a far better FB chiming in on the right than Tracy is. Tracy is better on the left.

Burton, i have no idea what position he played in the second half. I honestly thought he was left centre even though Xerri was still there. He went MIA again. Yes, he scored, but it was a centres try. 

I dont expect any changes. It was a game where our weapon (Kikau) had a fairly poor game and wasnt helped with no other plays in our arsenal. 

As i noted, this team and structure will be beat about half the teams in the comp. This in itself might be enough to keep everyone happy. I know i eould be happy to see us play finals this year -even if we went out in week 1.

But if we want to thibk about going deeper, we need to sort out the lack of creativity in the halves.

Either Hutch has to be told to park the gameplan of early hall and play eyes up footy, or try Sexxy, Taaffe or even BBO if hes available.

Burton in 6 is the right  choice, the only option is to change the 7.

IMO we are 3 team changes off being the best that we can be.

1. Preston to start, drop Salmon.
2. Patolo to start, King to bench OR add Sutton/Farmer to the bench.
3. Sexton to replace Hutch, or move Hayward to half.

If we promote Sexton try Taaffe at halfback in reserves.

Dropping Hutch and Salmon might weaken the defence, but Salmon misses a few tackles,  makes dumb errors and offers nothing in attack.

We might find that the attack is worse without Hutch, but there is only one way to find out.

The alternative to team changes is learn the lessons from the loss and tidy up tackles, errors and discipline.

If we miss fewer tackles we save some energy, because we don't need to scramble as often.

I would work on these things and change the team - do both.

For reasons unknown I watched both pressers. CC was fairly pleased and so he should be, but in the riff presser the germos "suck poor Nathan's cock" fest was sickening and chin senior couldn't even give the Dogs credit for putting it to them. What an arrogant cagina of a team. I hope other teams start to smack them before the seasons over.

#BDS...

Not too unhappy with the result given we didnt play well amd only lost by 6...

But i made a comment earlier in the week that we need more creativity in the halves than Burton+Hutch as they are only good for feeding early ball to outside backs 

If that gets nullified, they dont have any other trick shots. 

Tonight it showed. 

Could have won the game, but not the end of the world given Panthers will be a top 4 side. 

Its the others we must beat.

Fox went close to scoring a couple of try's and we should have stopped the first Panthers try.

There was an element of luck in the second Panthers try.

Cleary going off charged the game.

But overall the final score was  a fair reflection of the game. They were the better side but we are much improved. 

Preston looked terrible. I would keep him on the bench. We need Mann to be getting more minutes. Maybe put Curran on an edge. 

It’s great to agree entirely with you mate. We are the real deal. Two try’s each. Stuck it to them for the whole game. Even after making so many mistakes we were in it until the end. Great effort. And yes. Fuck the refs 

First half  was great and it was us for 20 minutes and toe to toe for nearly 30 minutes.
But the grind got to us.
And the second half got sloppy and the 16-10 scoreline probably flattered us.
I can't believe there were some sets of six where Burton didn't get to a kick because play went right. Just one spiral bomb as a result 
Kiraz proved what a gun he is and how resilient he is. His disappointment after scoring a try then realising the game was gone says plenty about the bulldog in this  guy.

Despite CC comments we only really matched them for 30 minutes out of 80. so that might mean we are only 3/8 of the way there

The Panthers were up for it they  knew Dogs were coming to get them . Our boys got frustrated and the miss tackles and mistakes crept in . This is Tesm that’s been in the last 4 G/F  they ll make you pay ..   Hopefully the team learns from this .. 

Tackles Reed 64, King 41, Hayward 38.

We made 377 tackles and missed 56.

While we need to improve Panthers have some guys that are hard to tackle.

I think that we made a few mistakes that we can clear up. 

 Next game Preston should start. I would drop Salmon and play another prop.

Replacing Hutch with Sexton is the other thing that we could try.

Otherwise this is the right side we just need to execute a bit better.

Can we agree the Hutchison experiment is done? He wasn't the only reason we blew it, ref is a fcckwit with his eyes painted on and we had more than 55 missed tackles. You cant do that against Penrith. 

Our stats are very good but we didn't execute any points the mountain of posession we had. This is still an issue.
But, Panfers would've put 50+ on us tonight if the Dogs of last year were out there. With the shit show from the ref, the silly mistakes we made, the terrible 2nd half performance by us and the luck the Panfers created for themselves we are on the rise.  To be only beaten by 6 points at their home ground against a near full strength side that has won 3 GF's in a row is a massive improvement on our behalf.  

Now that I am over the disappointment, here's how I saw it.
Yeah, we were on the wrong side of some calls, but the Dogs were their own worse enemy at times with sloppy play and disrespect for posession which a team like Penrith will make you pay.
It was far from our best effort this season but after the dust settled we had scoed 2 tries and kept the Riff to just two so it was only conversions and penalty goals between us.
What I saw tonight was a team on the rise. The Dogs are going from strength to strength and they provd that the last 6 or seasons are well behind them and they are not looking back. CC has gott the team in a good space and working on our faults. They have got the defensive game pretty much down pat and ifthey can start to improve their attack they are going to trouble the top four later in the season... by the way I still think the refs and bunker are shit and the commentators cocksmokers.

Thought the same. But the ref obviously called held 🙄

We took out Cleary and his backup. Well done. Fuck Penrith 

We got shafted by the whistleblower tonight. But that’s expected at Penrith. Great effort

Hello Kitty probably facing a suspension for colliding with the Panthers halves leg in reserve grade.  Hard to know how good the reserve grade win was.

We didn’t get some crucial calls, errors, missed tackles and just a bit of execution.

We are getting close to winning this kind of game.

This fuckwit is not giving us s chance to mount any sort if comeback. Between some shit refs calls and the suckfest from the commentators, it's getting unwatchable.

Kiraz.. arm carrying ball never touched the ground...

Penalties are killing us.

Stat's wise we are matching them except for missed tackles. 

I think that we need to get Preston on

Give Salmon a spell on the bench and use him later 

7 missed tackles by Salmon.

35 missed tackles doesnt help our cause but we've been scrambling well. 

We are in this contest boys, make no mistake. A couple of errors gave them repeat sets and we couldn't capitalise on our prolonged posession at their end. Both Panfers tries were soft. 

40 mins in... I'm a believer... Then I saw her face...

Only a bit... We can beat this mob later in the year... Even with Cleary...

Still devoid of 50/50 calls are we?

Good effort so far, Panthers a bit too good so far.

Cleary off injured might help us.