has our defence been found out?

[KaZa]

Yeah we lost.. it was going to happen... the more you with the closer you are to losing unless your Melbourne.

Cowboys lost 2 in a row and i knew they would beat us.. they dont lose 3 in a row too often these days. They were more hungrier than the manly boys.

One question though.. our defense was exposed.... an article was in the paper about our defense midweek..... are teams starting to finally expose it? if you look at our results.. we have not played anyone of great quality until last night. Tigers and Dogs you could argue but they dropped so much ball in those 2 games it wasnt much of a contest.

How do Manly respond next week... is how the season will pan out..

thoughts?

 

[Garts]

Our defence was not as bad as the scoreline made out, the missed tackle count was not the high if the figure I saw last was correct. Cant remember what it was but I was surprised.

Bowen was on fire and caused most of our problems and he will do it again to other sides. No embarrasment really.

 

[fLIP]

I didn't think the defense let us down. There were a lot of forward passes tearing us to shreds. At times last night I thought we were playing the Dallas Cowboys. That won't happen every week.

I also reckon there was an extreme lack of effort for most of the game. We came at them in spurts and looked good when we did.

Our defense was always going to be stretched against a side that can move the ball laterally as quick as the Cows. But we must remember the game was separated by 3 moments of Bowen brilliance.

2 Tries and stopping Stewart on his break away. Nobody else in the comp could have got him. Thats a 12 point turn around without conversions and we've seen Bowen win it for his team many times before.

 

[Pepi]

I don't think any team could have beaten the Cowboys last night, Thurston and Bowen in particular were on fire.
A lot of our misses were uncharacteristic - Lyon and Monas who are both usually great defenders missed a few crucial tackles.

 

[Kiwi Eagle]

My main concern with the defence is how we hold and dont attack in the line, They made a ****load of metres off their own line every time because we just stood waiting for them to get to us, rather than meeting them and hitting them back

Would be interested to see where we stand on metres conceeded this year

 

[DSM5]

The defense was breached twice on the line through obvious forward passes. Clark is a ref to be wary of, he is pedantic and clearly can't see in a straight line. We were beaten by a more committed and enthusiastic side. Our attack was disjointed by having two playmakers up in the line and no one seemed to know where our point of attack was going to be other than in high bombs, then it's obvious. Lateral running seemed to be the go, easily defended against. We played dumb.

 

[PEPSI]

niether team missed many tackles last night, in fact i recall a figure of less trhan 20 combined mentioned in the media somewhere. Most losing teams have more trhan 20 on there own.

 

[DSM5]

The tackles we missed , they scored. The tackles they missed, we didn't score.

 

[mellonhead]

Pepi, I think your comments were spot on! You can not defend against brilliance. I might add I did think the defence from 15 mtrs out was not good enough. I don't mind the Bowen tries but the one from the scrum 10 mteres out.... Also we didn't keep a straight defensive line with Lyons rushing up out of the line.... I hope this was an uncharacterist performance. I was really proud of the 2nd half performance. 2 years ago we would have got flogged by 40 points.

 

[danno]

I thought the difference between the two teams was a bit more than Bowen brilliance and some forward passes.

The Cowboys defence was great, putting alot of pressure on our attack. The Cowboys went wide in attack from the start. Our compressed defence was having to slide out all the time, not easy with Thurston & Bowen coming at you.

The Cowboys set the tempo of the match, we seemed to be playing out of our comfort zone(did we get a repeat set of six in this match, I can't recall one).

I am not going to be overly critical of our performance. The other team was too good on the night but we never threw the towel in. Neither of our halves played well but I don't want to poke the bears in here.

 

[Crushercleal]

Sometimes you learn more from defeats then losses. I think we'll learn from this, and go forward.

 

[weneedacement]

I think we mised burns more than we realised. His 30 r so tackles would have handy indeed and wuld have stiffened up the edge of the ruck,. that moves monas back to hooker where is better defensively hunting in a pack.