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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 2569031, member: 1899"] I believe the 14-0 lead was a god-send and it was a combination of good work from the two recruits and some sloppy mistakes from the Dogs. Watching back, the Dogs actually had the better of play in the early stages but that drop bomb from Perrett was a real killer for them. Suddenly, they're executing a goal line drop out and Barba close to the line is able to sum up the situation perfectly with that sublime grubber for Copley. What a tremendous first impression and hopefully he lives up to it. The Morris try was a tad unlucky. Kennedy gave away two silly penalties and they basically score off a play that is very difficult to defend. On replay, I reckon Copley will think twice before running through the blocking drill. He had a better play at it than Maranta and should have just batted the ball over the in-goal. That's a hindsight call though. In the second half, the tide really swung the Dogs way. They were desperate to get back into the game and were a little bit more desperate with the ball in hand and their kicking game posed more questions than the Broncos. When momentum swings like that, it seems like every little thing goes your way, and it certainly did for the Doggies. Like the time Ennis threw an absolute speculator of an offload off the ground which just happened to find Josh Morris who was able to draw another penalty from Kennedy. Or the two second kicks, both from forwards that happened to yield perfect results. The Finucane one in particular was depressing, I reckon if you got him to replicate that play next week, it'd roll over the touch line no problem but the footy gods made it rough. Of course, there were also a couple of questionable calls (seriously, how was the 2 on 1 strip against Hannant ignored?) that went against the Broncos but you can't get too critical when the boys are also producing some silly turn overs. The one on the Maranta quick play the ball was very distressing. In fairness, it was just really good work from Reynolds to have the presence of mind to bounce straight back to his feet, get square and dive for the ball before the Broncos even have a chance to get set but it was disappointing to see a lack of urgency from the players. In the end, the game was basically decided when Ennis got greedy and went for a second go at the line after being denied only moments earlier. It robbed the Dogs of his valuable service from dummy half and as a result, saw the ball go to Finucane on the last and resulted in a very poor end to their set of six. So what to make of this game overall? Did the new recruits make the difference? Did the old charges step up and help out? Yeah, to an extent, but at the end of the day, I just feel like this was one of those performances that can be encapsulated on the evening and stand as it's own good performance. Clearly there were some troubling signs moving forward and I don't know if the club will be able to overcome those deficiencies in time. Guess we'll have a better idea when the boys return to the greatest Rugby League stadium in the world. The footage also shows that Reed isn't running a good line or gives himself enough space to really get on the outside of Jackson and Josh was able to cover whatever gap was created very easily. Lockyer may have been able to do something with that situation, I'm sure of it. But that's Darren Lockyer we're speaking of. Last time I checked, he isn't going to play another first grade game again, so really, what he'd be able to do is rather irrelevant. It's a matter of whether Strasser or Nikorima would be able to do any better and honestly, I don't know if they would have. But yeah, I don't think that was solely Hoffman's fault on that play. Reed did a poor job of positioning himself...and that isn't exactly a rare occurrence either. [/QUOTE]

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