OFFICIAL | GAME DAY ROUND 2 TRIAL | Bulldogs vs Sharks | Discussion thread (8pm @ BSG)

[InGusWeTrust]

Taaffe cant be that bad again!! (hope)

I don’t reckon he’s our best choice fb, but I’ve seen many of his performances and never seen him fall off a cliff like that. He’s usually pretty safe, so I don’t make much of him having a shocker for half the match.

 

[Wearnze]

Looking forward to analysing the game today after I watch the replay tonight.

Going from comments sad to see Mahoney is still terrible for us.

Can’t wait for round 1 team selections … appears to be healthy competition for spots.

 

[GoTheDoggies]

Looking forward to analysing the game today after I watch the replay tonight.

Going from comments sad to see Mahoney is still terrible for us.

Can’t wait for round 1 team selections … appears to be healthy competition for spots.

He goes hard in defense and gives his all. You can't question his commitment.

Service is sloppy and he gets caught trying to take too many steps before releasing the ball.

I think it has to be down to fatigue, his decision making and pass technique suffers because of how hard he has to work in D. The Sharks put our middle third under huge pressure. It's not like his Parra days where they were dominant through the middle so he could stay fresh.

 

[ChesoBulldog]

Disagree about Xerri. He was one of our best backs in the two trials. Got through a lot of work in both games. He played better than both Sharks centres last night. I don’t know if he’s the best pick for a centre spot round 1 but we have other more important decisions, e.g: if
Tracey isn’t fit, do we play Critta at fb and Xerri & Kiraz/Clark at centre? Taffy blew it last night and hasn’t done enough over both trials to convince me he has a spot in the team at this stage. I’m comfortable with Tracey or Critta at fb, but prefer Tracey.

He’s not ready yet
He will come good but not yet

 

[ChesoBulldog]

It was both. Hutch shot out, Poasa didn’t (he stumbled or something) which left a yawning gap. Big deal it was the only try they manufactured. The other came from a poor pass to the ground from Heyward iirc.

Besides that I was very happy with Poasa. I can’t believe how many negative comments I’ve seen about him. He was good defensively besides that one stuff up and made many strong hitups. Pleasantly surprised by him tbh, as I expected nothing more than maybe a bench role.

He’s probably better off the bench as impact but I still struggle to see how he will see mins in first grade if he can’t fix that lazy shit in the middle of the ruck

 

[Wearnze]

He goes hard in defense and gives his all. You can't question his commitment.

Service is sloppy and he gets caught trying to take too many steps before releasing the ball.

I think it has to be down to fatigue, his decision making and pass technique suffers because of how hard he has to work in D. The Sharks put out middle third under huge pressure. It's not like his Parra days where they were dominant through the middle so he could stay fresh.

hopefully less responsibility this year without captaincy helps. He will have a big impact on our season one way or another. We need him to be better.

 

[GoTeamRaRaFunky]

Hopefully Ciraldo was just trialling combinations and his player rotation is better during season with a view to pack combinations and balance.

When scrums were packed, the size difference was quite evident. Also the team is playing with a high intensity manic energy and not maintaining composure. We also don't need to hug a player every time a mistake is made, just move on, refocus and just continue playing.

Also kicking game needs variation. There are not enough kicks to space, behind the line nor did we get any repeat sets and build pressure. They have to stop trying to win the game immediately from any point in the field and then getting frustrated when they don't.

The game was a good test in a way for playing against a niggling opposition. On that note the sharks have a lot of ***** in their team and will be watching them hoping they lose every game from now on. Whoever that player was who tweaked prestons ankle after he'd already hurt and gone to grab his ankle is a total ****. Am surprised a craig fitzgibbon coached team have such a shit vibe.

 

[The DoggFather]

Our biggest obvious issue was conceding a thousand points every game. Based on the two trials (the only thing we can judge so far) he has done exactly that, addressed the awful defence.

You are correct to an extent bro, but it was against a Storm with only 2 FGers (literally) and a Sharks without Hynes.

That's why I really wanted Hynes to play so we really see where we are.

 

[Benno Bulldog]

If we hang onto the ball in that game we win. As Gus says the best defence is ball security. Thier big forwards were starting to tire and in a normal game with only four on the bench we come home stronger.
Obviously a couple of big mobile props and a top flight 7 would improve our roster enormously
but we don't have those ATM. The best we can hope to do is trying to wear down the opposition middle with quality ball movement and swarming defence.
I believe our attack can go up a few notches when the team has spent some more time together. We didn't seem to have very good shape yesterday and when we did have some set
pieces it either broke down early or we ran out of room. This should definitely get better.
We will be better than last year, time will tell by how much.
My two cents.

Agree shape was not a word u could use our attack was all over shop….Salmon and Taffe and Reed didn’t Gel that game.

 

[GoTheDoggies]

We need Kiraz back ASAP!

 

[Kelpie03]

He goes hard in defense and gives his all. You can't question his commitment.

Service is sloppy and he gets caught trying to take too many steps before releasing the ball.

I think it has to be down to fatigue, his decision making and pass technique suffers because of how hard he has to work in D. The Sharks put our middle third under huge pressure. It's not like his Parra days where they were dominant through the middle so he could stay fresh.

You might be right, for a hooker to stand out he needs his forwards to dominate as much as Hb does , I don't think our pack will be able to do that this year
Although our forwards held up ok, the Sharks forwards were defenitly the stronger pack.
At Parra he looked SOO material, perhaps it was the Parra forwards who made Reed look better than he actually.
Les hope that our Forwards look a bit more like forwards this year, but I'll reserve my judgment on that matter untill I see DoggFather refer to them as backwards.

 

[Dogzzz of War]

Can cry about them all you like... But look back to posts about Lachlan Lewis for example, every man and their dog jerking him off saying he's the next best thing.
That's where the notion of 'negativity' can be wrong, some people just see things for what they are and call them out.
Not every poster should be a sideline mum cheering for absolutely everything otherwise you end up with boring forum... just my opinion though.

You’re talking about the 2 extremes there.
And these clowns just keep talking about how right they are when they have gotten plenty wrong. This forum should not be about imposing extreme opinions and then bragging when you get something right. Put your point forward, listen to everyone else’s opinions and then move on. These clowns are like broken records,
It’s turning threads into spam

 

[wendog33]

K

While the attack concerns me, I’m not too worried. It was a trial with too many interchanges to build any rhythm, but mostly we had a terrible completion rate that was the issue. We simply didn’t have enough good ball attacking sets to try out plays. Those errors are a concern too, but that’s easily fixed.

Defence is paramount and that’s the biggest thing I’ve taken from the trials. The players we’ve recruited and the training has the whole top 30+ committed and determined in defence. Let’s hope they keep it up throughout the year.

Keeping up 80 minute defensive efforts against bigger, well drilled teams willbe the test for this season.

 

[EL Hefe]

The Sharks took it easy on us plus no Nico hynes

 

[speedy2460]

Lots of problems have been identified. Most of them are true.
The one big problem from last nights game was simply that we had no game plan.
All the forwards played OK, but the backs were also playing like forwards.
Why didnt they utilise the good set of backs we have?

 

[wendog33]

don't think I've ever seen Reed run out from dummy half either whilst being with us.

He is playing way differently to how he played with the Eels. He used to be known for all his forward passes lol but now all our forwards aren't up alongside him for that to happen.

 

[CQDog]

Watched the game. I could see Hutchinson creating opportunities, he just fucked up almost every single time with the pass. Don’t think he plays that bad again, would still persist. Salmon and Mahoney were awful, and Burton was very quite and uninvolved. Also Taafe out for Tracey definitely. We don’t need Kurt Mann and Salmon in the team both at once either imo

 

[ChesoBulldog]

Just watched the replay
Number 10 is atrocious actually

 

[CMP]

Lots of problems have been identified. Most of them are true.
The one big problem from last nights game was simply that we had no game plan.
All the forwards played OK, but the backs were also playing like forwards.
Why didnt they utilise the good set of backs we have?

Because we have no size or quality in the middle. We are going get dominated through the middle again this year and there is nothing our star backline will be able to do unfortunately.

As for the game plan. We are playing a bog standard game plan. With it being plainly clear we are very undermanned up front. I was really hoping the coaching team may have developed an out of the box game plan to play a style that will unlock out strengths.

I didn’t see anything against Melbourne. Though was hoping, with what should be close to our run on side for round 1 against the Sharks to see some coaching influence on the game plan. Very disappointing to see nothing out of the box as far as a game plan/style has been worked on over the off-season.

 

[GoTheDoggies]

We have a very workman like (Tolman like) middle now. There is a lot more hard work and tackling going on. However, there is a lack of explosive power, drive, momentum and ruck speed.

1. No explosive running from forwards - check
2. No explosive running from dummy half - check

The only solution to this is within the back five. With our best possible back 5 selected it might just be enough to paper over this issue in 2024 and stop blow out scores.