Hasler quick to point out that shortcuts won't cut it
Greg Prichard | September 8, 2008
http://www.leaguehq.com.au/news/news/hasler-quick-to-point-out-that-shortcuts-wont-cut-it/2008/09/07/1220725856797.html
CASUAL observers might have thought when Manly coach Des Hasler said he was happy with the 34 points his team scored against Penrith, but unhappy with the 16 they conceded, he needn't have been so concerned. After all, the Sea Eagles had won pretty comfortably. But they would have been wrong. Hasler had every reason to stress the point.
You can do all the defensive drills in the world, but defence is mostly about attitude and if a coach doesn't jump on an attitude that isn't good enough, he takes the risk that it will still be there the following week.
Hasler hasn't turned Manly into one of the competition's top teams by allowing his players to take shortcuts. No doubt what he said to the media after the game was just a condensed view of what he had said to his team.
The bottom line is if the Sea Eagles had been playing one of the other top-rung teams and defended as softly as they did on their own line on a couple of occasions against the Panthers, they would have lost. Manly set themselves high standards, so they will work on that this week, with the likely outcome that they will defend with a lot more commitment in the first week of the finals. The better a team is, the more they hate letting themselves down.
Hasler was wary of going to CUA Stadium, since Manly had a poor record there. But the way it played out, for Manly to lose they would have had to have beaten themselves. The Panthers never looked good enough to do it on merit. After the home side had cut a 12-point deficit to two, Manly bit down harder and made sure they got the job done.
Penrith's finish to the season - they were in contention for the finals only to fade out meekly in the closing rounds - has been bitterly disappointing for the club and its fans, and has left coach Matthew Elliott struggling to survive. But the Panthers are certainly not the only side with plenty of good players who haven't gone close to meeting expectations.
Parramatta immediately come to mind. Before their game against the Warriors, Eels captain Nathan Cayless said it was important for them to at least be competitive in their final match of the season, so they could go into the off-season on a positive note. But they let the Warriors, whose away form had been the opposite to their excellent form at home this season, clear away to win 28-6.
The Eels aren't the type of club to sack a coach, but Michael Hagan will be told before next season whether he will be required beyond 2009, which is the final year of his contract. So the chances of him still being there in 2010 don't look good at this stage.
The Eels haven't been into the player market for next season, so if any improvement is going to come then it will have to come from the same group of players.
Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart wouldn't have been happy that his team conceded three late tries in their 28-22 win over North Queensland at Toyota Stadium, particularly as the Sharks pride themselves on their resolute defence, but with the game wrapped up maybe they started thinking ahead to the finals and forgot about playing what was in front of them.
As long as they muscle up again next weekend they will give themselves a great chance of winning.
Cowboys coach Ian Millward made plenty of noise, criticising Cronulla for what he regarded as over-the-top spoiling tactics in the play-the-ball. Stuart reacted by saying Millward must not be "the full quid".