Mate I'm fairly certain Jackson played restricted minutes last night. Trex was left side, Eastwood right side. Jackson only came back on for last 10. Our bench rotation is dumb. I don't think Graham and Tolman should be playing long minutes. I'd split 80 between them. With the other 80 split between Kas starting, and Fualalo bench. If Kas can't play 40 mins, he really shouldn't be in 1st grade. Eastwood is not a 80 min 2nd rower. Last night he was limping, and still he didn't chuck on RFM.
That penalty right on HT was a load of shit. Even in the first half. There was an instance where bmoz offloaded it to Jmoz, he bumbled it but regained it. Ref ruled knock on, yet replays showed no knock on or forward pass. Every bomb hunt put up Boyd chasing through was 2m in front of hunt.
Only played 58 minutes the least amount all year other than one of the Eels games where he played 54 minutes.
I know that a coach needs to be sure a player can work his way into a game quickly and effectively but surely there was some use for RFM on Thursday night, if not then Hasler needs to have someone else on the bench who can do the job. Does he have no confidence in the player?
Can't keep the fellas playing until they are on empty and then expect a miracle when we are behind come the final ten minutes by two converted tries. RFM has lovely footwork and an offload, why keep him on the bench when he would be of far more use on the field? His changes revolve around just a few, depending on who is playing of course : Graham, Tolman, Klemmer, Browne and when he replaces someone mostly he just brings straight back on the players who were the ones replaced.
Basically all year coach has had Tolman and Graham in rotation ( they have played 1350 & 1322 minutes respectively from 22 games and only Tolman has played 80 minute games 4 times ) .
I agree that Kas should play more minutes and cherry pick when Eastwood comes on and goes off. Klemmer plays on average just 53 minutes per game and Eastwood around the same ( although Klemmer has played 4 more games than Eastwood).
It must be difficult to pick and choose who to take off but how does one leave a player on the bench with no minutes, something our coach has done numerous times this year. If it is to harden the players to work under fatigue that plan is not really working as more often than not we look out on our feet and have no answers to scoring points late in games especially when we are chasing them. .