Match fitness was 10% less than Melbourne. Our attitude and focus kept us competitive.
Falling for Munster dummies was killing me! As he shaped for the dummy, I knew it was going to be a dummy and I was sitting 40 metres from the action! My reaction was why oh why oh why would you let one of their best attacking players run with the ball and dummy and get away with it?
In attack, I loved the fast crisp passing. The angled runs. RFM is going to start offloading to players running off him - on 2 - 3 occasions he is angling to the try line with the defense second guessing his every move and his strength over powering their attempts to contain him - it felt like slow painful motion seeing no support players giving him options to pass so they could crash over or he could dummy and go over himself - this is a massive opportunity to develop for us.
Also, in our haste to get it out wide, the good thing was, I notice an effort to straighten the attack and pass - when we did that, it just worked so well. The issue was, we had no respect for the sideline. I prefer we go out wide but be ready to pass it back inside with support play rather than be angling towards the sideline and ending up over it.
Overall, I was satisfied and excited about the team and about Kieran Foran but concerned about Frawley. Kieran was incredible in his speed, calling the shots and creating opportunities. Frawley is not confident - he is second guessing himself and his 2 step backward shuffle to correct his feet positioning before he kicks seems awkward and he ends up kicking too late and without control. Hence, out on the full when we had momentum and building pressure, only to gift them field position and a turn in momentum! Then he drops a no pressure ball to gift them more points and momentum. It was sickening to see him overthink and hurt the side - I feel sorry for him, but he needs a mind coach badly. He has potential and did do good things, but he can undo a side's momentum single handedly and that is concerning.
At times I felt we were trying to score fast and not be patient and build pressure. We need that focus of kicking for field position and create repeat sets - they did it to us more often than we did it to them. They played to win while we played to compete.
I am confident that Pay and the boys will get a lot out of this game and perhaps build on it for the Roosters game - if we beat the Roosters, I will be on cloud 9 for about 2 months. lol