Post 20,001

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Matabele

Journey Man
Okay, gloves off, let's not beat around the bush.

We were a chance at 10-4 and I was personally confident we would bring it home. That all evaporated with 41.21 on the clock when that disgraceful little Crocker **** careened elbow and shoulder first onto the jaw of our most potent attacking weapon.

I don't give a flying **** that Cockup hasn't been charged for it. It was a callous and cowardly act from a known grub. Of course the video ref saw no problem with it - the video ref was Bill Hollywood Harrogant who must have been bitten by a maroon dog at age 3.

And of course they are not going to charge the prick because how embarrasing would that be? Clearly the action should have been taken on the field. Crocker should have been marched. To rub salt into the wound, shortly after he scores a try right where Stewart would have been.

Not since that stunted classless coward Lamb bashed Ellery Hanley out of the 1988 GF has an act of football thuggery gone unpunished and basically determined the result of a GF.

About 5 minutes after we ran one of our favourite pet plays that involves the fullback injecting at pace, and Robertson didn't have the extra yard or two required to make it work. The storm wrapped him up, cracked their knuckles and mentally said "there's no dangers at the back, let's target Orford".

Why was our "go-forward" non-existent? Because that assinine garbage collector named Archer allowed the Storm to stand 8 metres from the ruck and launch themselves before the ball had even hit the ground. Not one penalty for offside all night, yet they were offside all night. Too bad our coaching staff weren't smart enough to instruct our boys to folow suit.

You DO have to wonder when a side gets away with murder AND receive every 50/50 call AND can bash a star player out of the game - what's doing there?

All that being said, let's not forget that we saved our very worst performance of the year for the big one. 67 missed tackles! 15 missed tackles from our season's best forward. Thuggery and inept officialdom aside, we did not deserve to win the game because we were so poor.

I read through the week that Mark Carroll felt "off" on the Thursday before the big one in 1995. That the adulation and attention of GF meant they took the field flat.

Surely this same thing happened in 2007. We will learn from it.

Most embarrasing issues of the night, one centre that can't tackle (matai) and one that can't run more than 20 metres (Bell). A $500,000 player that can be stripped by a smaller outside back. A $500,000 player that is flat out kicking the ball more than 30 metres.

These things will surely be addressed in the off-season ahead.

And our Warrington-bound friend was shown up as the flat-track bully that he is. Bye bye Monaghan, thanks for your passion, commitment to the cause and help to the disadvantaged - but we'll be much better off having a specialist dummy half in the side, rather than a frustrated halfback with delusions of grandeur.

Personally one of the hardest parts of the GF was having my little gnomish friend yapping in my head from the 15th minute onwards about how we're wooden spoon certainties in 2008.

I personally think we're every chance of returning to the big Dance next year and taking it out.

There is clearly improvement in us and yet we still finished 2nd. From last night's team we lose Monaghan and Hicks. We have superior players in the wings to replace both - Ballin and Bani.

Cuthbertson will benefit from a proper off season and Perry will add to our prop rotation (Bryant is useless). If this Waratah wonderchild steps up mid-season, then we will have an impact backrower to complement our stocky workhorses.

But the one dark cloud on the horizon is this - last night showed that if Mr B Stewart suffers a long injury, we will struggle to score points.

Cheers
 
In closing, i would like to absolve the following from blame for last night's debacle:

Glenn Stewart - our best player last night by a country mile. Played like Choc had for us all season whilst Choc was off doing his Daniel Wagon impersonation.

Brett Stewart - Looked dangerous in his 40 minute stay and (fatally) caught every high ball that came his way.

Robbo - Another 110% effort from Mr Consistency.

Chris Hicks - I will miss him.

Kite and King - Tried hard.
 
Kite and King - Tried hard.

I must have been watching a different game. I thought that Kite and King were ineffective and totally dominated by the storm forwards. The stats tell the picture:

Jason King - 36 mins - 7 runs for 38m - dropped the ball which led directly to a try. His missed tackle on Crocker was pathetic

Brent Kite - 50 mins - 9 runs 72 metres gained.

Compare this to Jeff Lima who played 42 minutes for 21 hit ups and 15 tackles.
 
Sorry to burst your bubble Mata but from what Chuckwood mentioned in a thread earlier, there is a strong rumour that Monas may not be going yet! :)

And if you think Kite and King were OK or tried hard your judgement must've been clowded by too many brews. They were Junk, Hicks as well. I also don't think Glenn Stewart was that good at all.
 
Cross gets of numerous high tackle charges and an eye gouge.

Crocker gets off his disgusting 'john hopoate' elbow.

Lyon gets of a dangerous throw charge.

But king is picked up for raising the knee on a bloke tackling him around the ankles.
 
Crocker is a cheap shot merchant, always will be. He should have been sorted out on the field the next time he got his hands on the ball. Problem is that we don't have a forward with the required mettle to stand up and be counted when things get ugly.

We lost the match in the ruck, we allowed them to slow us down all night, yet they managed quick play the balls and tore us a new one right up the middle. It was fair dinkum like the F3 freeway there at one point. Why we didn't lie over them and get a few flops in there is beyond me. It was painfully obvious that Archer was overawed and afraid to blow the whistle, so why not take advantage. The 10 seemed more like 12+ to me, but Melbourne got set early and had headstarts all night, we just struggled to get back in time before the next dummy half run or one off the ruck hit up came.

One thing that annoyed me was Monas overplaying his "let's try and get the markers offside by running at them" play. He must have tried about half a dozen times with no return. After the first couple he should have realised that the pea had fallen out of Archers whistle and there were going to be no penalties for ruck infringments. Instead he persisted, to the detriment of what little attacking momentum we had at times.

Let's face it we got blown away. We were lucky to be only down 10-4 at half time, it could have been 20 + the way we were going. Granted we were still in with a chance at that point but definitely needed to score first. That hope evaporated with the loss of Stewey, from there it was a meek submission from a group that looked out of their depth and unable to run at the pace.

Did King get charged ??
 
I thought Kite had his worst game of the season. The performance from our starting props along with Choc's capitualation was a key reason for our crap performance.

Other thoughts;

- I thought Glenn Stewart was our best forward.
- The apparent game plan was to try and go around the Storm. Either that was the game plan or the players didn't follow the game plan which surely had to start with laying a platform up front.
- There was only one match this season where our kickers consistently found the grass. That was against Nth Qld. This has to be addressed.
- Besides his kicking, I actually thought Orford tried pretty hard to get the attack going. Why couldn't he get some dynamite up King and Kite thought?!! Unless our gameplan was to run around them?!!?
- The towering Inglis bombs have only one purpose. He stands deep from the play the ball with only Slater and one backrower behind him. They then steam through on the fullback but don't try to compete for the ball. The only purpose is to smash (read: take out) the fullback.
- why didn't our forwards fire up after Snake was smashed??
- the limp performance really dragged down a the great ride we have had this year but there is no doubt we have exceeded preseason expectations. Unfortunately the players must have deep down believed that before the GF was played.
 
I cant believe im saying this but I agree totally with Mata except for his comments on Kite & King , they were crap
 
C & C and Bradza your points are very valid. I hate this 'turning the other cheek' crap. Maybe it's the 'Christian thing' that another blogger thinks is good and that Kite and some other players are into. That sort of ****e doesn't work against a team of bullies. We were bullied around the park, and when bullying back was required it just didn't happen. Mata, Croker should have been belted, not marched. Instead he was allowed to score. Rubbish. Kite and King were complete crap, soft. Robbo, I like him, but he ran alongside their 5/8 discussing the try line and then let him score easy. Not good. What was obviously missing was a game plan. I didn't see anything like one. After Slater had caught his tenth Ox kick and returned with interest, maybe the Ox could have put more balls along the ground. Could have, but didn't. We must look for a good 5/8th as lyon in completely wasted. Surely Des will see this, surely. If he persists in Lyon for 5/8 instead of centre I'll start to wonder about his coaching. More later.
 
I too was of the opinion that our forwards should have tried to bash the **** out of Crocker. I was very dissapointed they didn't.

At the very least you'd think Glenn would have lined him up.
 
It's not Glenn's go though. I'd be surprised if he's ever been sin binned or sent off. In any grade of Footy.
 
It should have been someone's go though. Maybe that's the point. Where's the famous 'mongrel' that's talked about. We needed it and it didn't appear.
 
I think the turn the other cheek types would be better desrcibed as "churchies" than Christians. the sole aim of the Christian church these days seems to be to make geldings out of men.

This is in contrast to the fairy stories of that mythical Jesus fellow who never existed in history who is alleged to have taken out the churchmen of his day with a whip that he'd stayed up all night making.
 
And some dont want Matai in the team, his agression alone gets him in for me as he is the only one with the ability to fire up it.
 
I've been oone to pour heaps on Stevie all season but looking at the soft coqs in the side I now think we need more of his type. Tezza would have sorted out Croker.
 
There's a difference between aggression and stupidity.

And it is a fine line, generally all the agressive type players are capable of their fair share of brain explosions.
 
Team P W L PD Pts
3 3 0 48 6
3 2 1 45 4
3 2 1 28 4
3 2 1 22 4
3 2 1 15 4
3 2 1 14 4
2 1 1 13 4
3 2 1 10 4
2 1 1 6 4
3 2 1 -3 4
3 1 2 0 2
3 1 2 -5 2
3 1 2 -15 2
3 1 2 -22 2
3 1 2 -36 2
2 0 2 -56 2
3 0 3 -64 0
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