Game Day: Manly v Eels [Round 1, 2017]

[conanu]

Norman only had 11 tackles compared to Chez's 30, so that may be a factor.

And our lack of possession may not have helped either.

I love Chez, so can be biased when it comes to him, but I thought he was pretty good today and he was working really hard, so the effort was definitely there IMO. And as you pointed out the cheats had all the luck and refs go their way.

cant blame Chez, poor bastard always wears the crap.

 

[HappilyManly]

Comparing the halves today, I thought Norman played like the million $ player instead of DCE!

Having said that though, the Eels had all the luck and refs go their way which helped.

Look at their respective workloads.

Chez is still in our top 5 tacklers. He is tired from doing the defensive work that the forwards around him should be doing.

30 to Norman's 11 tackles

Green and Gutho had similar defensive loads.
I was looking for Green and he was MIA.
Then again, when he attempted to tackle he was ordinary and his kick into in goal went over the sideline.

No injuries, so let's regroup for the Rabbids

 

[Ralphie]

cant blame Chez, poor bastard always wears the crap.

That what happens when you put your hand out for the big $$$ and you are the captain.

 

[Captain Moondog]

That ref has got to be front runner for the Shayne Hayne medal....Parramattas best by a huge margin.

 

[conanu]

That what happens when you put your hand out for the big $$$ and you are the captain.

Fair call

 

[pjayz]

I get what you guys are saying and the team put in a great effort in defence no doubt, but I noticed at the 20 min mark we were gassed and started to struggle and that is where we went backwards and started with the dumb footy pushing passes and dropping balls. Fatigued players make dumb decisions. Parra were rubbish and we made them look good. Better teams won't let us hold them out for 9 sets. We look better in defence so far which is a positive but jesus our attack was non existent and I put that down to yes having to defend so much but also a lack of fitness. In my opinion and mine only I don't think we have looked sharp in fitness since the new regime took over and probably part of the 15 season too. However we just come off a clean pre season with no injuries so we should all be firing on all cylinders. It is not an attack on our team just my perception of where we are going wrong.

Last year we were really underdone in the fitness department. In yesterday's game I thought we looked much better given that defence is far more taxing than attack and we did a ridiculous amount of tackling.

I also watched every game and most teams were gasping after 20mins as off season training isn't the same as game fitness. The Roosters had all the ball in the first half against the Titans and hit the wall in the second half when they had to defend (and they are notoriously fit).

 

[Fluffy]

What sort of idiot company would sponsor the refs?

Ahh, it is youi, who do the ad with "mr reasonable" who gives advice whilst walking. I hate that bloke.

I hate that company and will never use them.

Actually its not Youi, they just ran out of room.

Was supposed to be youidiot.

 

[Simonmyers11]

Blaming fitness wasn't the reason we lost. We looked fit, we did almost 100 more tackles than parra and looked a lot fitter than them. They were gassed at the end. Even Norman who only did 11 tackles said he was struggling at the end!

After the 20 min mark we looked gassed cause that was when Marty went off and the go forward! Lawrence is not up to it, and we lack another decent prop. Hopefully Lussick will help when he comes back. Think Lane as a big body could attract more defenders too? Myles and brown are a waste on the bench!

We only had 3 or 4 sets against them in their 10m zone, scored 2 and really bombed a third. You have to say they were lucky on two of theirs. A lucky kick, then a lucky 40-20 on the 7th tackle with a fortuitous pass that came off.

Ref gave us little chance in attack as well with the 6m he was getting them back

 

[Fluffy]

Terrible ball control

Terrible ball control, just ordinary defence in our red zone wtf have they been working on during the off season?

Ordinary defense in our red zone? WTF

We let in 3 tries defending for 42 tackles in our red zone.

Parra let in 2 tries defending for just 12 tackles, how bad is their red zone defense then?

 

[Mark from Brisbane]

Had a lot of deja vu listening to this game....

Poor refereeing...

Poo making stupid mistakes...

Poor discipline...

Poor ball control...

DCE apparently unseen..

Fmd!

Ground Hog Day!

 

[Fluffy]

Yes I am. No doubt the boys slogged their guts out. I am not questioning the players effort at all. But I find compared to other teams our fitness gets us into trouble and we lose our shape. Just because the players are going above and beyond with determination doesn't mean they are fit. You should be happy I am not blaming Barrett!

Other teams like Parra - who did 2/3 of the work but looked worse than us at the end?
Roosters who blew their gasket at half time?
Warriors who put on concrete boots at half time and almost lost to the Knights?

 

[niccipops]

Wanted to wait until things simmered a bit before commenting.
That game was one of the most frustrating I've ever watched for many reasons:

• lack of possession
• dropped balls when we finally got possession - I mean the legitimate ones where our players actually dropped it
• continuous ball stripping not called on
• the slime constantly offside
• the penalty that should have gone our way that resulted in a slime try
• Semi jumping to take our player's head off - no penalty - wtf
• 5th tackle penalty in front of the posts

What was great was that defence on our line. Very courageous and something to be proud of. The slimeys should have won by 50 but the difference was a couple of penalties and the freak 40/20.
That was literally a game where nothing went our way and they lost by a try.
Go Manly!

 

[mickqld]

Haven't seen the game so only going off reports. Perhaps we have improved defensively but I'm seriously sick of all the excuses. It's not good enough anymore. If we can't hold the ball and exhibit some discipline with penalties then it's just going to be a replay of last year. No surprise the refs were trash. That's Turdys standard for Manly games.

 

[Supernintendo Chalmers]

weren't fox spruiking some kind of live 10 metre line on screen for this season? Geez that would come in handy for a referee review session. That ref did all he could to ensure a spot in NSW Cup next week.

That said, we certainly didn't help ourselves and that will be another game on the 'couldve been a different story' pile, carrying the ball up so high when meeting the line is just asking for the D to have a crack at it, and they will, even moreso if the ref isn't blowing a penalty the first couple of times. Sure it helps in getting an offload, but there's a time and a place for that, you sometimes just need to play it simple to get in a rhythm, unfortunately we don't have a calming influence / forwards leader out there, it 'should' be Myles while Jake and Marty are the step it up type leaders - unbalanced, but it was another mr whippy soft serve effort from him, oh well he only has a few more weeks of his 1st grade career left. Once Darcy is fit, he has to drop out if he doesn't step up.
Lawrence and AFB will continue to improve and at least show effort / deserve their spots.

Like last season i didnt see much structure / set plays / direction in attack which was a worry. But i'll reserve judgement a few more weeks on that, opportunity was slim yesterday. That starts at dummy half, i noticed a number of times the ball went to a player not expecting it. If there's no communication / combinations there, you are on the back foot before the ball even gets to the halves. I see lots of looking for individual efforts rather than team effort which is no surprise given what little time they have had together.

Good to get it out of the way though, you can have a very confident pre-season and think you've got things covered, but once you come out on the field and it doesn't quite click, you know there's work to be done. There is no shortage of promise, and there were some good efforts out there. Overall the performance was better than I was expecting going into the game.

How the team comes out next week will be the real indicator of what is ahead and where things are at.

 

[Fluffy]

Comparing the halves today, I thought Norman played like the million $ player instead of DCE!

Having said that though, the Eels had all the luck and refs go their way which helped.

Norman was re-signed for close to $1M as well, 900K was the paper talk (compared to Chez's 1.1M), doubt either are the actual amounts.

 

[Deleted member 26876]

Haven't seen the game so only going off reports. Perhaps we have improved defensively but I'm seriously sick of all the excuses. It's not good enough anymore. If we can't hold the ball and exhibit some discipline with penalties then it's just going to be a replay of last year. No surprise the refs were trash. That's Turdys standard for Manly games.

It was a huge improvement in defence, highly recommend you watch the game to see just how good it was

 

[Shoe1]

Watching live, I felt parra were offside sometimes, but other times a slow or loopy pass from API gave their defence an extra second to get in our players' faces.

On tv I bet it looked like parra were offside more than they were. We have a serious dummy half problem.

 

[The Royal Soup]

Sack Barret

 

[globaleagle]

Stay safe out there @globaleagle, that blizzard sounds treacherous.....!!

And yes definitely agree with you, GO MANLY!!!

Yay! - thanks.

And wouldn't you know it.....

We get through all of that unscathed and about an hour ago my better half drove down to the local shops to buy some food....and a car ran into the back of ours!!!! bugger (I didn't want to type 'rear-ended' as y'all a bunch of perverts! lol)

everyone is ok, minimal damage etc, just stupid tourists not being able to drive in the snow.



edit: go Manly!

 

[Eagleheart]

Yay! - thanks.

And wouldn't you know it.....

We get through all of that unscathed and about an hour ago my better half drove down to the local shops to buy some food....and a car ran into the back of ours!!!! bugger (I didn't want to type 'rear-ended' as y'all a bunch of perverts! lol)

everyone is ok, minimal damage etc, just stupid tourists not being able to drive in the snow.



edit: go Manly!

Oh that is a damn shame, sorry to hear that global, unbelievable how things happen sometimes. Glad to hear everyone is o.k, but accidents even with minimal damage are just a real pain in the rear end*.

Hope your week gets better global and maybe we can even get a win on Saturday.

Go Manly...!


*For the perverts out there, a pain in the rear end has nothing do with what ever you perverts may think it does.....o.k....lol....!!