Positives - Woods & Tamou were both great, Tamou especially was very dominant in his carries, Woods a good workrate. - We looked dangerous in good ball zones, Daley has clearly worked on a lot of set plays - I like the fact that our halves played both sides of the field in good ball - Hopoate was solid, didn't get caught out in defence from memory and didn't put a foot wrong. Maybe I'm just being a bit generous in comparison to other wingers abomination of a performance - Klemmer was very impressive, will be an absolute beast when he fills out a bit more. - QLD had ten fold the opportunities we had yet still only won by a point
Scott was great. I hardly remember him being off the field ....fuck he must have racked up the minutes. Terrific performance.
GI definitely wasn't 100%. I think tonight was the first time ever that Hodges was used more in attack.
Other than a try assist and a couple of decent runs, Pearce really didn't play much different than usual.
Defence was ok, nothing speical. QLD exposed our marker defence on numerous occasions, struggled to wrestle the player to the ground on numerous occasions, our line speed was hit and miss at times throughout the game & we got caught on the edges quite a few times. QLD left a lot of points out on the field.
Hopoate was shit. Got dominated with the ball in hand and didn't really get tested too much in defence.
If it was one game then I'd agree but it dates back. I'm not as convinced a Alec that it's Thurston who's the issue but it's pretty clear the left edge hasn't been functioning for a while now.
The left edge hasn't been the same without Harrison. But it's not a weakness. Look at game 3 last year, QLD still have plenty of points.
A dead rubber? I'm not saying it's a weakness but it's definitely a positive for NSW that it's not functioning anywhere near as well as it has in the past & probably should. If it was NSW just flat out wouldn't have enough points in them regardless of who they picked.
NSW showed they could play some footy to in some dead rubbers during QLD's streak too, never meant jack shit when the real games came back around the next year. They're a bit like trial games but on angry pills.
Chambers impressed the fuck out of me. My god he was good. His work rucking it up was insanely good. Scott was fantastic. Boyd was fucking real bad. He was so sluggish. It cost us two tries. Should not have been playing. The decision to kick for two was one of the worst I've ever seen. It should've handed the victory to NSW.
Didn't think there was that much wrong with that decision. I probably would've expected Parker or even Smith to be more likely to put that over than Thurston though. Bit of a flat game, especially for a one-point difference. No real flair or skill on display, and the battle up front never really fired up properly. It just didn't feel right watching Origin and basically expecting that there couldn't be a fight. I don't expect many changes for the next game though on either side.
