If we only progress as far as this final against the Panthers it won't be because anyone lacked in effort. I'd love to demolish both our remaining opponents in a similar style to the Melbourne win, but if it is an arm wrestle in the final minutes you know we're up for that. The Panthers are well coached and have unpredictability on their side, and they had the week off which can be good or bad. They've gone into this fortnight with all guns blazing as far as talking things up in the media goes. Maybe they are trying to drum up crowd support, maybe they're trying to bolster their courage. Either way I hope they end up with egg on their faces. We're desperately hiding under this little radar still. In our favor they've got loads less finals experience and many will be under more pressure to perform than they have faced before. Getting his teams mentally prepared for pressure finals is the one thing Cleary has not yet achieved and hopefully our boys monster the spirit out of their youthful squad.
Where i think we are at an advantage is in the way we have played all year. It was good football for the most part, but somewhat lacking in excitement. We did not destroy a lot of teams in our regular season campaign, but we mastered the art of applying pressure for long periods. We followed a simple game plan. Roll forward using our massive and skilful pack, then aim for kicks that we may score or get a repeat set from. While our forwards have developed some nice structures to assist with second phase play. We've aimed for repeat sets all year mostly though, and Reynolds even worked out how to gain one without needing to roll it in goal last week. If we get these repeat sets and the referee doesn't call a lot of stoppages our big forwards leave their opponents in the dust. If we play disciplined and avoid having the refs hurt us, i think we'll steamroll the cats at the end. Early in the season we were dominating possession and finishing with two or three tries in the last 20 minutes. Our strength can also be a disadvantage at times in this match. Segeyaro has embarrassed plenty of big tired forwards this year and will be looking to do so again this weekend. I'm not sure how you shut him out of games but Hasler will need to have a plan in place to nullify him. If we give Soward time to line up his kicks he can do some damage and he has a decent running game when he wants to use it. Their forward pack is not the greatest, but they have everything to prove and will be hell bent on coming out on top. 1-5 are pretty strong for them in attack too but do have some defensive issues we can exploit.
We should beat them but i truly hope that this game is not decided by bad refereeing calls. If we won or lost a game based on a bad call it will leave a sour taste in my mouth. Mostly because i think we'll be on the wrong side of it if it happens, but i know that the media will have a field day with negative articles if the refs actually won a game for us. We used to thrive at this time of year and despite limping out of the finals last year and into them this year, i think the side has the right mindset to take all comers. We are the little engine that could. The NRL's script never had us penned in to go this far, so i hope we have two more wins in the tank. It'd be nice to rub the faces of guys like Gould and co in the dirt after their bias recently. 9 years without a premiership for the dogs is about as long as i can stand. I'll be proud of the effort even if we don't make it into the GF but Hasler still seems pretty confident so i'll expect the side to give these last 1 or t2 games a real shake.
