9 penalties took a lot of our energy.
Always a Bulldog
This happens game after game after game.
Just about every 50/50 goes against, heaps of defense, fatigue, errors, allow points, get behind, force passes, more defense, 6 again etc ...
While all this is going on the opposition manage to play mostly penalty free footy.
Last season we received 80 penalties, conceding 130 , -50 differential. I would argue, many of ours were received late in games.
To those who say it is because we were bad, well ....
The Roosters were the second most penalised, receiving 104, conceding 133, -29 differential.
At the other end of the scale Souths the media darlings, received 142, conceding 95, 47 differential.
Six again set restarts, we were the most penalised with 115, surprise surprise !
The next most conceded were Melbourne with 95.
The best being Cronulla, only conceding 54.
So we have the bottom team and the minor premiers conceding the most, and a mid table team with the fewest !
It gets worse when breaking down the six again, as we conceded a massive 50 restarts for being inside the 10.
Melbourne were next worst with 34, then The Tigers with 27, most teams were in the 20/25 range.
Penrith were best with 16 in an entire season, which is very hard to believe considering you could find someone offside on every defensive play.
Could not find stats for six again received, (didn't look too hard ) but i am sure they would not make great reading.
So far in the trials we are copping it again, despite having a vastly different team.
6 nil (pen/ 6 again) conceded in the first half against Newcastle. Should of received an 8 point try. Received a few in the second half when the reserves were on, which is typical.
Last night we could have received the first penalty of the match for the Fox being run off the ball which was clear on replay, but nah. Several other 50/50 calls went against. Sharks do a clear cannonball, missed on field, player on report, no penalty. Two play the ball infringements, disallowed try with very minimal contact, forward pass called despite Cronulla throwing 3 or 4 which were not called. Marched 10 after a soft penalty, when i thought we were marginally on top, which ultimately led to a try and a huge momentum swing.
Is it playing badly that leads to penalties, or the penalties leading to bad play ? Probably a bit of both, but the stats above indicate that it is pretty random in terms of teams and ability.
Stats of this magnitude make it difficult to even get into an arm wrestle, let alone win.
This is not about making excuses, but rather a genuine concern, which is backed by the numbers.
For a team that has plenty of areas to fix, this sits at the very top for mine.