I am very intrigued by the lack of mental sharpness of many of our players. They appear slow, lethargic mentally, making decisions in slow motion, with a body moving with no hard and intense intent to it.
Something is in our water and I can't figure out what it is - it just appears as if many players are thinking they can just go through the motions and be carried by other players. If the team played with the intent and intensity of Morrin today, its a different game. Why can't they run with purpose like him - he is smaller and inexperienced FFS.
Our team is fatigued. We are down and out for the count. End of season can't come soon enough.
We have players who are second guessing themselves when 2 others are in the tackle but are dominated by the attacker. Our players don't know whether to tackle low around the legs or go 3rd man high or resort to the defense line. You see them hesitate 1 or 2m away and then they run back.
IMO I think our players are not the right type to play the defensive structure being asked of them by the coaches. This falls in CC and his assistants. They might get away it in some games, might get masked in other games but ultimately it gets found out.
Not sure where to from here. But all I see is guys losing the tackle domination, one or both tacklers behind the legs of the attacker with no marker and players off side.
The technique to wrestle the attacker backwards or on his back and time your roll off is absent. It then has a roll-on effect on the next play and so on.
Need to go back to some basic wrestle and slow-down tactics but players must be trained to react to the referees tolerance levels. They need to be smarter.
And unfortunately that last line is what kills us. We are too dumb to adjust our game as it's needed.