My view is quite simple, we get a fair shake from the ref and we win the game. Penalties (as far as I am concerned 6 agains are a penalty) at 10 to 3, a huge task to overcome that blunt statistic. But it was actually a lot worse than the numbers show, one of our penalties (6 agains) was on tackle 1 and an other on tackle 2, seriously how does that compare with the 3 penalties (6 agains) on the 4th or 5th tackle? Then there is the position on the field where the penalties were awarded, 2 of our 3 penalties (6 agains) where on our try line or with the 10. Whilst 4 of their's were inside our 20, that makes a huge difference to the game.
As for our defence, hardly surprising when the opposition has 30% (184 versus 140) more runs, coupled with the fatigue that goes with that and the disrupted defensive line due to penalty, on top of penalty. Interestingly the penalties were evenly spread with no one Bulldogs player copping more than 1 penalty (no serial offenders).
The only concern for me was the error count of 13, with Cotric topping the count at 4 and Averillo and Allen on 2 each. Of the 4 Cotric errors I think 2 were "winger" errors bringing the ball back, perhaps a good reason for him playing centre not winger (that's just for BeastMode
). Lost ball errors are something that can be eliminated and obviously need to be worked on this week.
I did note that
all of the Captain's Challenges were successful (when was the last time that happened), that in itself shows the error rate of the ref, at least those decisions were positively proven to be wrong.
Go Dogs