We should have put the game to bed before half-time.
Gildart could have put Marshall away a couple of time and didn’t. One was a certain try if he passes. The other was 50-50, but he should still have passed and not kicked. Williams threw a cut-out pass when a step inside would have put himself into a huge game 5 metres from the line. Clubb knocked on 10 metres or so out on the first tackle. None of these involved Sarge getting anything wrong. The lad did ok as did most of the team. We looked fast and athletic compared to Hull. Across the park, things look better than last year.
Most of my frustrations were with us giving away soft penalties and handling errors. These are the main areas to work on. If we do that we’ll blow teams away rather than invite them back in the game. In the first half, we dropped off when Lockers went off (again). The good news is at the start of the second half we were blowing them away with him still on the bench.
Not sure if it was because he had a knock, but at some points, Davies was at centre and Sarge on the wing. Not sure if that came across on TV. I have watched the game yet. Was driving back from Sydney to Melbourne, yesterday, so I’ll watch the game again today to see if they mention it and why.
I’d give the team 7/10 for their overall performance. Gildart gets the lowest because of his bad choices.
Right now the sum of the parts looks better than any individual. If we can stay fit things look positive and we should be in the mix this season if we keep this up. Let’s not scapegoat one player when every one of them has something to work on.