Losing these first 2 games is not a surpise.

The manner of both losses is disappointing becuase while the attack is a bit better than last season, the defence seems significantly worse.

However, is still early days, but this is reality check for fans, the coach and players. 

You don't need to try to convince us you are clueless,....

Clueless.

Now there's a good word to describe this team...

Like Ennis said on the Fox coverage. "They have nothing in attack. NOTHING"

He was good last week although suspect in defence which is not unusual for a young half.

I don't remember any try assists or line break assists, any great runs, or any great kicks, apart from one from a foward pass.

It is hard and to produce the goods in attack every week for a young half in a team being beaten, but I hope we see more of last week and less of this week.

It is still not too late to blame Des...

We were a better team when we only signed good props and had Hasler as coach. 

Early days, this is a rebuild, Hasler inherited a good squad and progressively made it worse.

Barrett does need to address some glaring issues, IMO when a side is in trouble go for youth, and select the team on form not experience and reputation. Sometimes a kick up the backside is what a senior player needs.

The fowards will look better with an even share of posession, that means stopping the dumb errors and soft tries. 

This Ava Seumafangi... is he any good? All we need him to do is run & tackle fucken hard!

Am I asking too much off him?

One thing I will says is, Hasler had the side defending well most of the time.

For all his faults, Lichaa was a big part of that as were Tolman and Jimmy Graham.

What we need is good defence without brain-dead attack.

Brian To’o..... he’s like 5ft, yet no one can tackle him, breaks tackles with ease & is always looking for the offload

If he can do it.... why can’t any of our starting 13 do the exact same bloody thing?

Just need some big fast props. We are missing Thompson. 

So far OK, but stats wise Dean Britt is out performing him.

The reserve grade prop who impressed me the most last week got dropped this week, he is a big unit, but will need a few years to work into NRL standard match fitness.

We have seen Britt before, if he is the best reserve grade prop, that answers the question.

I did think young Doorey and Topine are great backrow prospects, IMO both are significantly better than Waddell.

At this stage I'll almost shout Dman drinks for a night if Baz drops, Katoa, Napa, Hoppa and DWZa.

Any other players ending in 'a'?

I said almost, as my bank manager has a veto.

We need a good defensive hooker for next year with our sublime halves. Plus a couple of hard running props. 

Throw in the odd miracle and we can win the comp 😁

When we get Thompson back a JMK/Dietz combo might add a lot to our attack, especially in dry weather.

We definitely need Burton, no question.

This season should be an improvement on last season as we have more cap to play with and have recruited some name players.

Otherwise we have to conclude Pay is a better coach than Barrett, or we bungled recruitment and retention.

He is a Matty Utai clone ....

Maybe some needs to get the Newsreader angry .... tell him he made a spelling mistake in 6th grade. 

Yes his attack today was bad. Really bad. To the point where Barrett really needs to think about rushing Lewis back as Averillo clearly cant step up and create if Flanagan is not producing in attack himself.

You had singled him out in defence and that is why i made the point of his defensive action. But i agree his attack was really good last week with alot of variability and vision, while today it was pedestrian, 1 dimensional (kept passing the ball back on the inside to a waiting defence) and kicks were no effective.

I really dont think you understand or appreciate the effect Ben Barba had on that 2012 team.
His return runs / breaks from fullback and fear in the opposition when he chimed in from the back, had them backpedalling from the get go.
The forwards simply just on a roll of the back of that effect.

Whatever you do, dont ever question how important it is to get a roll on. We did it once or twice today from quick PTB from DWZ and Cotric and it showed.

The problem we have, is we no longer have a Ben Barba type player who can instigate it from the start of the set of 6 (maybe next year with JAC), and we certainly dont have the line speed in our forwards or creativity in our spine players to provide it.

We are truly behind the 8 ball and probably staring at a wooden spoon if we dont address this issue.

The game has changed from the 1980's. The rules are such that it is impossible for a team like the 80's to win a GF. 
If we seriously want to compete the prize, we need to play the game like it needs to be played in 2021.
That means we have to win the roll-on, win the set restarts, win the field position and the rest will sort itself out.

No. Not enough.
That just has you avoiding the spoon.

We want to try to win the title.
Its a good attribute to have but its not enough on its own.

The real stuff up was not chasing Ivan Cleary and re-signing Des instead.
There was no guarantee we would get Cleary (even before his Tigers stint), but it was clear he wanted to coach again and now look at him.
Has his team primed for one of the best shots of the title in living memory, with a team that oozes talent, skills, brains and playing with confidence.
Even his reserve graders are forced to play top footy as they also want to be part of it.

Only go to a couple of games a  year so why did have to pick today..Half Canterbury Cup and the NRL...games and a half and not one point. Thought the first half of NRL was pretty good performance. They dropped the bundle after the non try but had it been 4 nil down we were in it...the try right on half time crueled it big time. JMK was disappointing ..he made one attempt at the line and went the wrong way. Katoa threw a huge forward pass at a vital time. Second half seemed to go on forever.  Burton was okay in Canterbury Cup..seems to know when to go and when to pass. Averillo was particularly disappointing for mine.I actually like driving in the rain...so the drive was particularly enjoyable...that was it.

It should be and it most likely will be. But we are lacking in the middle. Need Thompson to get back on the park. And need better forwards. We are playing like a team full of Ben Barbas

Doc... you do realise Dman has been drinking since 6am with Toby Rudolf in an undisclosed location.... what do you think he will say when he reads your last post?

Being the worst defensive side in the comp practically guarantees you will win the spoon.

The priemers are often the best defensive side in the comp and are rarely outside the top 3.

Both attack and defence are important, poor performance in attack, puts pressure on the defence.
Poor defense never gives the attack any chance. That is the first 2 rounds in a nutshell.

In this game a silly penalty on a strip from Katoa gifted the Panthers field position then Hoppa and DWZ gifted the Panthers are try.
After that we played ok, then a foward pass from Kotoa stuffed up our attacking momentum.

In the end poor reads and poor misses gifted the Panthers another 2-3 tries.

Eveytime the score, we kick off they get more possession, all that extra posession ultimately counts.
End result is the oppostition has 70% posession, players are worn out from tackling.

Jackson and Elliott did a lot of work in defence, as did JMK when he came out, Waddell was also good.
It is deflating busting a gut in defence then having teammates make dumb errors and gift the opposition tries, then kick off and do it all over again.

I recon we were slightly unlucky to have the try ruled out.
Seemed to me that DWZ fumbled the ball straight up and the Panthers player contacted it with his head or something like that. The bunker was down, but came back on line in time to make the call.

At other times, other teams would have got away with it, even though no try was technically the right rulling.

If we fix the right edge defence, we stop the oppostition scoring, that boosts our confidence and dents theirs.

When we get tries ruled out confidence drops, being soft in defence makes us vulnerable to low confidence.

If we fix the defence, the attack will come, recruitment definitely improved the attack.

HD, the concern was that we had very few chances in the opposition 20 because we couldnt get ourselves there.
We pretty much relied on Panthers error (Staines dropped bomb) or a penalty (2nd half).
The real concern is what we did with the limited chances inside their 20m...... we did nothing.

Huge concern that we had no idea what to do. Its almost like we didnt want to be in their 20m

It gets very frustrating watching your team get beaten week in week out. We seem to be a luckless side where we are predominantly on the wrong side of the 50/50 calls.  I know that doesn't excuse our poor defence and non existent attack but we keep shooting ourselves in the foot with dumb lethargic football. There are some forwards that are so pedestrian they are a waste of cap space and need replacing ASAP. Anyway I am unhappy with the team ATM so I will reserve any further comments for next week.

No forward in our team made over a hundred meters. Most made less than 60. That snd the shit service from dummy half killed any chance of a win 

We can Johns and Lockyer as halves and we’d still get pumped with our forward pack. Your looking at faults in the wrong areas.

That’s horrendous....