I keep saying, it's a fitness thing. Teams come out, and blast us early, because it works. They tear us apart while we build into the game.
It's 2016 - you can't build into games. Teams will rip you apart - look at this, Sharks, Tigers starts against us - literally tearing us to shreds.
If we can't play for 80, something has to be wrong, and I think it's that our players can't play for 80 minutes, but can play well for 65 odd.
It's not a fitness thing Ryan for the most part, we are getting drained by not being able to combat the power game of fresh mobile big forwards running hard and straight----it has been the case since 2013 and progressively getting worse year on year.
Almost invariably we lose the battle of field position from the start, heading backwards bracing for impact and unable to keep up increasing the liklehood of getting penalties against us at the wrong times of sets or due to better field position more repeat sets.
We lack the self belief ,confidence or the right kind of hardened up size to handle hard running big forwards at the advantage line and produce a dominant ball and all tackle. As we brace for impact it becomes harder to stop the momentum so more players get sucked in to finish the tackle---through struggling to contain the physical hard running bigger forwards each tackle drains our resources.
Our go forward sets are soft in comparison and do not drain the defensive line, we lack the ball playing options now to combat this by using skilled lateral ball movement for softer second man spread go forward.
If you don't have the ball playing composed skill level the higher risk of lateral ball movement will result in a higher turn over rate---or soft one out hitups that get dominated and are either ineffective or attacking defence can induce a mistake.
Yes you will see Manly after the initial first 20-30mins start coming over teams once the fatigue factors kicks in, self belief of being able to better withstand the slower running of bigger forwards is restored and it "looks" like the team has found some energy or "woken up".
The two biggest momentum swings in the Souths game was the kick off blunder and the power run from Taupau with Starling working off the back of. The changing of momentum was really the first time we started to induce some fatigue back into Souths.
Until Manly can start either breaking tackles or creating openings with more lateral skilled ball movement we are going to keep being dominated and looking flat.
Until Manly start bending in when hitting a forward with more attacking defence that can induce some fatigue and pain through our defence we will always be on the back foot unless we develop a sound slowing down technique.
Right now it is like we are sitting back accepting the inevitable hoping to not leak too many points then ramp up as the opposition becomes more containable due to slowing down---if that opportunity arises at all.
