The Silvertails Preview: Round 9 The Manly Sea Eagles v The North Queensland Cowboys

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By @KeithSheldon

Another week, another five day turnaround as well as an increase to our current injury list. Thank you NRL and your amazing scheduling. So we beat Newcastle and DCE returned... so yay. But we were playing really disorganized for long periods of time there and lost both Snake and Turbo… so darns. It wasn’t a pretty win, and it was a costly win. I think a lot of the scrappiness in the first half however had to do with some gale force winds, and we did admittedly look decent in the second half. But now we limp back to Brookvale, ready to take on the red hot, reigning premiers the Cowboys. Also, I have already done this but I want to take this time to congratulate Jamie Lyon on his wonderful career. He has been a fantastic leader at our club and will go down as one of the all-time great centres. It will be sad come 2017 when he isn’t lacing it up with the rest of our team. Hopefully he can go out with a bang this year.

Do I really need to say anything about this team? They outplayed Parramatta last week, it was an even contest but then Corey Norman made the most obvious professional foul in the world and was sent off for 10, which made the floodgates open. They are just in form and can destroy opposition teams from all over the park. If another team will ever go back to back again, it will be this Cowboys team. But now they head south, down to Fortress Brookvale that has been looking very crumbly and weak to play Manly. Warning, this one will be short. Partly because of how obvious the result will be, but mostly because of my university assignments. So I apologize if I happen to phone it in at all.


Team Lists:

Before I start, Trent Barrett named basically an unchanged side from last week. Turbo and Stewart are both confirmed out, so therefore I will make a team list based on what I think would be best to cover their injuries.

The Manly Sea Eagles
1.
Dylan Waler
2. Brayden Wiliame
3. Jamie Lyon
4. Steve Matai
5. Matthew Wright
6. Api Koroisau
7. Daly Cherry-Evans
8. Darcy Lussick
9. Matt Parcell
10. Nate Myles
11. Tom Symonds
12. Martin Taupau
13. Jake Trbojevic
14. Lewis Brown
15. Addin Fonua-Blake
16. Brenton Lawrence
17. Siosaia Vave

The North Queensland Cowboys
1.
Lachlan Coote
2. Kyle Feldt
3. Justin O’Neill
4. Kane Linnett
5. Antonio Winterstein
6. Michael Morgan
7. Johnathan Thurston
8. Matt Scott
9. Jake Granville
10. James Tamou
11. Gavin Cooper
12. Ethan Lowe
13. Jason Taumalolo
14. Rory Kostjayson
15. Patrick Kaufusi
16. Scott Bolton
17. Ben Hannant
18. John Asiata

I moved Walker to fullback to cover for the injured Brett Stewart, and brought in the very timely new recruit of Matthew Wright to cover the loss of Tom Turbo. Api then moved back into the halves with Matt Parcell returning into the dummy-half role. There are questions about the health of Api, Skivvy, Symonds and Brown so I hope to god they all manage to line up again this week, we will need it.

Meanwhile the Cowboys have an unchanged lineup for the fifty billionth time in a row. Shame about how injuries can destroy one club but never even think of touching another. Those are the breaks I guess.


Analysis:

Oh god we are ruined. We are comprehensively beaten in all areas of the field on paper…. with like one exception maybe. Lachlan Coote is in amazing, once in a lifetime form. I am very surprised he isn’t in the discussion for the NSW squad, he is up there with James Tedesco in terms of form, and he really was an understated reason as to why they won a premiership last year. He takes so much playmaking and organizing pressure off of Thurston and Morgan. He is playing a dam sight better than Brett Stewart, who is a lot better than Walker.

As for halves, Thurston makes DCE look like a chump and Michael Morgan makes Api Koroisau look like a chump. Thurston and Morgan are the best halves pairing in the comp bar none. Our underperforming halfback and rookie pivot can’t even touch them. Man, writing this preview sucks.

As for the dummy half, Matt Parcell is honestly close to the level of Jake Granville. Call me biased (I probably am) but Granville’s service from dummy half is lacklustre. His running game is top notch and exploits lazy defenders at a whim but Parcell’s service from the ruck outclasses his, and he is also no slouch when it comes to dummy-half scoots. Honestly, I think this is the only part of the spines that we aren’t totally outclassed in, Parcell is just a gun. Also, Jake Granville can only play about 60 minutes and his given a breather by Rory Kostjayson, who is a very meh sort of player.

In terms of props, they have two starting forwards who are essentially auto-picks for SoO and Australia, we have Myles and Lussick. We are going to get rolled whilst the starters are on. I think our bench props match it with theirs however, which is ice. Hannant and Bolton are both pretty good, solid forwards that do their job when the starters go off and could probably play starting roles at some other clubs. However Lawrence is in some ridiculous form, whilst Vave is still essentially a bowling ball of a player. Addin Founa Blake meanwhile is a tricky one, I think he is going to be a very good player but he will take some time to adjust to first grade, so expect him to make a few errors and go missing occasionally for the next season or so.

As for the second rowers, we are beaten badly here as well. Kaufusi and Asiata are fine enough players but the real damage here is the starters. Now Gavin Cooper is not underrated, people need to realize this. In fact he is almost overrated. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t good, he just gets some ridiculous hype. Meanwhile Ethan Lowe is the form second rower of the competition, and Jason Taumalolo is one of the few locks in the game that I believe are better than Jake Trbojevic. I don’t see how Lewis Brown, Tom Symonds, Martin Taupau and Jake Trbojevic can match these guys. They are all good players, but these North Queensland second rowers are exceptional.

God damn writing this is depressing, because even in the outside backs we are kinda outclassed, well sort of. With turbo gone we have Wright the Cowboys reject and Mr. 14-1 Wiliame as our wingers, who are destroyed by Kyle Feldt and Antonio Winterstein who are both fantastic finishers. However I do think our centres are better than Kane ‘dick fingers’ Linnet, and Matai has recently been in form that puts him above Justin O’Neill. Wow that is sad, there is one position where the Cowboys don’t outclass us in.

My only discussion for this week is how the hell do the Cowboys keep avoiding injury? We struggle to put together that same spine twice in a row yet the Cowboys have had one injury in the past two seasons and that was their worst player in Linnet for like 3 weeks. It is just rude.

Conclusion:

Yes this is a short one, however the obviousness of our defeat plus assignments and what have you have pushed me into making a much shorter article this week. Well anyway, I think we are just outclassed here, with injuries robbing us of any ability we might have had to compete. I made a joke a few days ago to a friend that we will lose by 10 for each one of Parcell, Stewart, DCE and Turbo that aren’t playing for us. Therefore we will lose by 20.

Picture credit: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...s/news-story/72676f05e58dc72e1858d16aadac0109
 
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I expect we will go out to startle them with our energy*
Our players know we are going to have to beat these blokes later in the year so it is important to really have a go to see just how short or how close we are at this early stage of the year.
I can see a narrow loss - or win!

*bash the crap out of them
 
Team P W L PD Pts
2 2 0 36 4
2 2 0 26 4
2 2 0 23 4
2 2 0 19 4
2 2 0 12 4
2 1 1 13 2
2 1 1 10 2
2 1 1 3 2
2 1 1 0 2
2 1 1 0 2
2 1 1 -14 2
1 0 1 -20 2
1 0 1 -24 2
2 0 2 -8 0
2 0 2 -17 0
2 0 2 -22 0
2 0 2 -37 0
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