Such a disappointment, but honestly even though I am peeved it does not hurt, because, believe it or not I was half expecting the result we got tonight. I had the feeling that the mindset of the team would be just like" The Cows without JT .... we have it in the bag" and starting Frawley, which should have been a positive, just fell back into allowing Mbye to have control ( or non control depending on the way you look at it). Foran will make a difference, but can he work truly effectively with what we have at the club at the moment?
The club of course, will take the usual line " Proud to be a Bulldog" even though tonight was not an effort befitting a first grade team. Cows won just about everywhere; time in possession, completion rate( now that will hurt the coach) and of course on the scoreboard. At times we seemed to run up the white flag and meekly surrender when the going got tough. Bupa never gave up though and as usual had good input into the game for the 57 minutes he was on the field.
I hate to keep on saying it and I hope my instinct is wrong, but morale at the club is not good and something is truly on the nose. Players can say it all they like and so can management, that the team is tight and they are all on the same page but how do your team mates ignore all the talk of players being tapped on the shoulder and shopped around. I know many wanted Josh Reynolds gone but that too must have an effect on the team...just look at the way Graham was when questioned about it. Something is not quite right.......
The coach, as he should, has the control when it comes to tactics, positional selection and player selection, but nothing really has changed in a positive way tonight. So confused as to the way he played Frawley . Good to have a spare back on the bench just in case, but it meant that we had a SIXTEEN man rotation, with Montoya playing NIL minutes tonight. I suppose you could say that he needed the forwards on field the way the game panned out, but when things are not going well surely throw a curve ball and try at least to see if he can have any impact. Fresh legs may have helped. What did we have to lose?
We have the Roosters in ten days time and we need a massive turn around to be competitive. We were beaten by what many considered a team to be rudderless without their captain and playmaker but they certainly had no trouble scoring against us, albeit mostly with kicks that we were incapable of defending against. Back to the drawing board fellas........
