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Message: [QUOTE="Brotherdu, post: 2808935, member: 9226"] Some of my thoughts - [LIST] [*]One of the marks of a good kicker is finding the ground on long kicks (not the fullbacks chest) and giving your team mates time to challenge high balls when putting in attacking kicks. This means judging height and distance well. Hunt struggled/continues to struggle with both of these and I thought had a really bad night with the boot. Parker mentioned in the pre-game that he thinks Hunt needs to spend time away from training working on these skills, which indicates Parker doesn't think that he does. As last year's captain, if anyone knows, he would. [*]Hunt's passing was pretty poor, one could easily have led to a 80m intercept that would have changed the game whilst we were on attack. As people mentioned, this could be to do with the new attacking structure or bad service from dummy half. I'm not too concerned about this as it's easier to fix that his kicking. Let's put it down to preseason rust. [*]Milf's defence is a worry. He's small, so there are always times when he will be run over by someone bigger than him, but the attempted tackle on Townsend was very poor. The sharks looks pretty threatening everytime they came done that side. [*]Sims, Thaiday and Blair did well and stood up to the Sharks pack. I thought Sims looked tired when he came on for his second stint and wasn't as effective, but was still good. I don't think we have lost anything losing Wallace. It was great to see Thaiday's legs pumping again. Teddy Blair also did more in attack than normal which is great to see. Our young bench really need these guys to lead from the front. [*]I'm not sold on Macguire at lock. Defensively he is sound, but in attack I feel like he isn't sure what to do. He seemed to pause after receiving the ball, take a moment, then decide where to run. Less thinking, more running. [*]Arrow surprised me. I wasn't expecting much, but gee he seems to have beefed up over the pre-season. He looks like a really solid machine now and was way more effective hitting the ball up than I recall. He also had a few nice offloads which helped a great deal in keeping the big sharks pack on the back foot towards the end of the game. [*]Moga looked good for his first game back in a long time. Safe under the high ball and I really like the scrum play where we went to him. [*]Boyd, Kahu and Oates were good. Oates took some hard hit ups (twice in a couple of sets if I recall correctly) which really helped with our depleted bench (Far out he looks unco scoring some tries :P). Kahu scored a great try and kicked well and Boyd's play making is fantastic. [*]Some people complain about McCullough's failed dummy's close to the try line. I don't mind them. He might not score many, but he keeps the defence honest. If he puts it away, the defence will just slide and there will be less space out wide. People also criticise his red zone play. I'm not sure if this is purely his fault, if he has too many voices in his ear or no one demanding the ball, then there are other issues to work on. [*]The bench didn't let anyone down, especially considering we were down a man from half time. They held their own against one of the best packs in the comp. [/LIST] Overall, I think it was a really positive outing. I'm not sure we will beat the Storm or Cowboys just yet, but we will know more once we have seen them play this weekend. [/QUOTE]

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