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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 3006964, member: 1899"] Melbourne did an excellent job of breaking down the Brisbane Broncos. Bellamy has obviously done his homework on how the Broncos construct their repeat sets, because he got his kickers to deliberately kick it towards Isaako's wing as early and as often as possible. Munster and Smith did an excellent with their kicks and there wasn't much Darius could have done, especially not with Addo-Carr's chase. It meant that the Storm were constantly playing on the front foot and could execute their early shifts to Kaufusi and Scott which they'd play off the back of. That right edge attack caused Brisbane headaches all evening and in their efforts to get numbers to defend that side, made them vulnerable to quick shifts where Melbourne were able to score the three tries they constructed. However, I don't think it's all doom and gloom for Brisbane. The Broncos were their own worst enemy and played right into Melbourne's hands. The teams that have performed well against Melbourne have typically played from infront and have frustrated Melbourne into making errors. Brisbane completely botched this with Lodge's incredibly dumb indiscretion and the Bird error. At 10-0 up, Melbourne are well and truly in their zone and become next to impossible to beat. If the Broncos were to win from there, they needed to change the flow of the match. They needed to construct their sets so that Milford, Nikorima or McCullough could kick it towards a sideline so the team could regroup and Melbourne couldn't win those early rucks. The Broncos only managed this once in the opening half and it was actually by accident. Milford put in an early attacking kick for Oates, which ended up beating Corey easily over the sideline. Then when the Broncos were able to force a scrum, it was when they were in position to put in an attacking kick and have Melbourne working it off their try line. They just never got the timing right. Despite all of this, the Broncos still gave Melbourne plenty to worry about. The Broncos were still able to generate 34 tackle-breaks on the back foot, with nearly a 1/3 of them coming from Corey Oates. Under Seibold, the Broncos backs made nearly twice as many runs than they had the season before and made plenty of in-roads. While the backs didn't quite take as much advantage as they should have, it does provide the Broncos with a decent base moving forward. The other noticeable change in the Broncos was how aggressive the defensive line was. There were a lot of occassions on the night where the Broncos were looking to put on big shots and while they didn't come off on the night, if they hit they will be momentum changers. The key of course will be getting the defensive line to adjust as there were a few occassions where the defensive line was left short but it was a promising sign. So TL;DR Melbourne were excellent on the night and would have flogged most teams on the night. Brisbane were their own worst enemies, but still managed to show good signs. Corey Oates was a beast and has so far locked down his place in my Round 1 Team of the Week. [/QUOTE]

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