Des out coached by Fitzgibbon tonight

[bob dylan]

Will not win a comp with the 2 centres we play week in week out, Harper should of been hooked in the first 15......don't worry about who we buy next, we need 2 centres, quality centres.Centres who can run and tackle

We really need to address prior to 30 June deadline.

Suli would of been more than handy, along with fit Walker and Koula might of been ok but that ship has sailed.

 

[DaveLP]

Worlds best player out
3 front rowers and one back rower out
A centre that had one of the best halves of footy ever
No luck whatsoever with injury and decisions
Played at a ground that not many visitors come away with the 2 pts

I’m not prepared to say he was out coached

He said it himself in the post match interview about harper being underdone by covid so why play him? From the first touch of talakais it was easy to see they were just going to feed him early ball all night. Instead of telling saab to help early by leaving his wing to Garrick nothing changed for the whole first half and that's all it took. There were no defensive structural game plans for the best inform centre of the last 3 weeks that's not entirely on harper that's on des too. Could have swapped him with Parker or moved haumole out one but by the time he did change anything it was over...

 

[Red Pill]

Whilst we had good players out so did the sharks. I don’t believe the influence of coaching has the impact seemingly implied in this thread during the course of just one game. I think most coaches even including Trent Barrett are capable of developing sophisticated and pinpointed game plans that expose weaknesses in the opposition. It comes down more to execution on the day. I believe coaching has more influence on how a teams gets through their season eg. how often they do indeed execute game plans and how quickly they bounce back when things don’t go there way etc. it’s more about the longer journey than simply one game. But hey we certainly got belted in the first half and need to understand why, the easiest way to do this is to look at the coach. I am not saying Dessie did not make a few decisions that certainly did not help our cause but as he said in press conference hindsight is a wonderful thing. Let’s see where both teams are at the end of the season.

 

[Smokin Joe]

If the idea of a compressed defense is to control the ruck then it was probably silly to go uber light in the forwards.
We failed to control the ruck and they spun the ball wide early and fast which caught us out as we were going backwards and not pushing up out wide.
The massive amount of space and time and extra numbers meant we were constantly outnumbered and guys trying to rush up would not have helped as it would not have been a cohesive effort.
Yep Harper's attempts were extremely poor and I am not saying differently,but it was way more than just him.
Maybe don't use a compressed defense with a second rower at prop and a dummy half at second row?

 

[Red Pill]

If the idea of a compressed defense is to control the ruck then it was probably silly to go uber light in the forwards.
We failed to control the ruck and they spun the ball wide early and fast which caught us out as we were going backwards and not pushing up out wide.
The massive amount of space and time and extra numbers meant we were constantly outnumbered and guys trying to rush up would not have helped as it would not have been a cohesive effort.
Yep Harper's attempts were extremely poor and I am not saying differently,but it was way more than just him.
Maybe don't use a compressed defense with a second rower at prop and a dummy half at second row?

We certainly were caught short as you point out. I think Davey is big enough to play/defend in the middle, Lawton is a capable back rower. He is more of a backrower vs hooker imo.

 

[Smokin Joe]

We certainly were caught short as you point out. I think Davey is big enough to play/defend in the middle, Lawton is a capable back rower. He is more of a backrower vs hooker imo.

Davey is big enough to defend in the middle and support the props as a lock,but when you have Jake and Lawton in the forward pack you need him to be an alpha at prop and as one of his most vocal fans I cannot say he did a good job on Thursday.
Lawton is a capable backrower but I would not go into a season with him as one of my two top backrowers.
I don't think we won the middle in the first half,are you saying that we did?
I thought the original pack named would have done a better job.

 

[Ryan]

Davey is big enough to defend in the middle and support the props as a lock,but when you have Jake and Lawton in the forward pack you need him to be an alpha at prop and as one of his most vocal fans I cannot say he did a good job on Thursday.
Lawton is a capable backrower but I would not go into a season with him as one of my two top backrowers.
I don't think we won the middle in the first half,are you saying that we did?
I thought the original pack named would have done a better job.

Agree here entirely. Jake doesn't make metres (he mainly distributes the ball, and occasionally runs), Lawton doesn't make metres (he's a hooker, playing backrow for goedness sakes), Croker definitely doesn't do quality Hooker explosive runs (he's a ball passer mainly)...that leaves Haumole (who is fantastic), then our two props, who really need to carry that extra burden.

Given that, why the HELL would you carry two utilities on the bench (particularly because you already have a utility playing backrow !!!!). At half time, they almost doubled the metres we made.

This team isn't good enough to play funny buggars. We need to go back to a traditional setup, where we have enough forwards to maintain momentum. My team last week would have been:

01. Tolu Koula
02. Jason Saab
03. Brad Parker
04. Dylan Walker
05. Reuben Garrick
06. Kieran Foran
07. Daly Cherry-Evans
08. Tof Sipley
09. Karl Lawton
10. Taniela Paseka
11. Haumole Olakau'atu
12. Andrew Davey
13. Jake Trbojevic

14. Kaeo Weekes
15. Kurt De Luis
16. Ethan Bullemor
17. Ben Trbojevic

 

[Woodsie]

Agree here entirely. Jake doesn't make metres (he mainly distributes the ball, and occasionally runs), Lawton doesn't make metres (he's a hooker, playing backrow for goedness sakes), Croker definitely doesn't do quality Hooker explosive runs (he's a ball passer mainly)...that leaves Haumole (who is fantastic), then our two props, who really need to carry that extra burden.

Given that, why the HELL would you carry two utilities on the bench (particularly because you already have a utility playing backrow !!!!). At half time, they almost doubled the metres we made.

This team isn't good enough to play funny buggars. We need to go back to a traditional setup, where we have enough forwards to maintain momentum. My team last week would have been:

01. Tolu Koula
02. Jason Saab
03. Brad Parker
04. Dylan Walker
05. Reuben Garrick
06. Kieran Foran
07. Daly Cherry-Evans
08. Tof Sipley
09. Karl Lawton
10. Taniela Paseka
11. Haumole Olakau'atu
12. Andrew Davey
13. Jake Trbojevic

14. Kaeo Weekes
15. Kurt De Luis
16. Ethan Bullemor
17. Ben Trbojevic

Also, when Walker comes on and a prop goes off .. he is not replaced with a fresh prop (like the opposition) .. he is replaced by Jake moving to prop .. who has already played for 25 mins and made 20 tackles ..

 

[Ryan]

Also, when Walker comes on and a prop goes off .. he is not replaced with a fresh prop (like the opposition) .. he is replaced by Jake moving to prop .. who has already played for 25 mins and made 20 tackles ..

Spot on. We tend to excel when we get impact off the bench. Our last win had Lawton making darts and scooting in for tries from dummy half.

Our forwards all making metres.

What we (Des) is trying to do is make a square peg a round peg to fit into a triangle hole.

**** me Des, play it smart. Play players in their proven positions. Not "out of position". Play in form players. Bellamy doesn't tolerate ****e performances , neither should we. Our team is good enough to keep with the norm. Stick to the norm, but do it bloody well !! We have THAT ability.

Hope we get some key players back this week. I hope they don't go the lazy option, and not defend Haumole. That was a cracker tackle. Nothing more, nothing less.

If I see three utilities being used again, I'll scream ! Des needs a coaching director. Someone you get and game smart like Cronk. Des was great 10 years ago. GREAT. But the games moved past him now.

 

[Red Pill]

Davey is big enough to defend in the middle and support the props as a lock,but when you have Jake and Lawton in the forward pack you need him to be an alpha at prop and as one of his most vocal fans I cannot say he did a good job on Thursday.
Lawton is a capable backrower but I would not go into a season with him as one of my two top backrowers.
I don't think we won the middle in the first half,are you saying that we did?
I thought the original pack named would have done a better job.

Definitely not saying we won the forward battle in the 1st half. We certainly did not! As for the original pack named doing a better job? You could be right. Just saying that the players picked were capable enough to execute the game plan better than what they obviously did.

 

[eagleron]

The strength of Bellamy, is his systems and game management adapts week-by-week depending on the opposition, and conditions. Des on the other hand has his 2008 standard, nothing changes (it's decent against the pretenders), but come up against any form of quality, we just get flogged.

Plus Bellamy would not accept mediocrity from anyone, we appear to have a sit and hope things change mentality and we're not winning anything with an approach like that, we need to adapt a more ruthless approach

 

[Red Pill]

Plus Bellamy would not accept mediocrity from anyone, we appear to have a sit and hope things change mentality and we're not winning anything with an approach like that, we need to adapt a more ruthless approach

As much as I hate to admit it I think Bellamy is the greatest coach of all time.

 

[eagleron]

As much as I hate to admit it I think Bellamy is the greatest coach of all time.

I agree 100% I've often wondered how our current team would go with him in charge, he can get more out of a player than any coach I can remember

 

[Deleted member 26876]

As much as I hate to admit it I think Bellamy is the greatest coach of all time.

Still waiting for him to start fresh at a struggling club and turn them around but he'd never take that risk

 

[mickqld]

It's been obvious that our left side is the better attacking side. Reason being that Foran sets up plays better than DCE on the right. So why wouldn't you have put the 2 most likely players to do damage i.e Olakuatu and Koula on that left side with Foran. Then defensively we would've had Davey (who should never have started at prop) and Parker up against Talakai. Des has lost seriously the plot with his out dated ideas.