Everyone saying that the defender chose to commit to Salmon and therefore no obstruction are forgetting that this doesn’t matter when that whole inside/outside shoulder thing happens and there’s any form of contact with the defence. Bottom line is Salmon screwed up, put himself in the wrong position and made it easy for the defence to create an obstruction. Kikau took direct advantage of the hole that was created so game over, easy decision for the referee (Sutton saw it on field and bunker took about 3 seconds to confirm).
Salmon was terrible yesterday. In the trials he looked like a great ball playing lock who would give us more attacking options but Mann offers so much more. Salmon played 68 minutes yesterday, 31 tackles with 6 missed, 1 error, 72m run, no offloads. That’s just a poor outing whichever way you look at it.
Mann played 52 minutes, 27 tackles with 0 missed, 3 tackle busts, 107m run, no offloads but always looks likely to break through the line. He has the motor to play 80 minutes and he should be playing all of them.