I thought he was up against Hayne a lot in attack. A few of his major runs seemed to happen with him beating Hayne on the outside. Not too sure though. Maybe he was just playing pretty far infield and O'Neill was just shunting it up somewhere.
That's what you get for not picking the greatest fullback of all time, who is fit and in form. They like to go on about 'Queensland Loyalty' when they pick plodders like Myles, Guerra & O'Neill, yet they had the gall to leave Billy Slater out of the side. Especially considering the fuss they made over him in camp last season. The best the coach could come up with to justify it was "...it wouldn't be fair on anyway to put them under that sort of pressure after just eight games.". Too much pressure was the best they could come up with, for a Queensland legend. Every one of the controversial selections for Queensland were duds, those selectors have a lot to answer for. Valentine will come in for O'Neill next game, guarantee it. They've drawn a line through Slater unless Boyd gets injured.
Well O'Neill goes, obviously. Holmes comes in or Boyd shifts right if Slater comes in. Myles has to be benched. Cunt tried hard in D but he was out on his feet after 8 minutes. No momentum whatsoever running the ball. Get Wallace and Hess in there. I was fine with Milf. Cunt had no opportunities and held his own. Obviously JT comes back in if he's fit.
Slater would not have made a difference. On the list of things that lost us the match tonight, that barely enters the equation.
I actually cringe to think what would've happened if Vaughan and Peachey played tonight. That's as dominated in the middle as I can remember and those two would've made it infinitely worse. We were threadbare up the guts all night.
Our kicking gave me the fucking shits tonight. Cronk's mid-field bombs were completely useless. If you're going to do that shit, it has to be high enough to let the chaser's belt the receiver. And secondly, what the fuck was with our choice to not contest any of the them? We were so willing to just let the back three catch instead of actually looking to aggressively contest the football. Gillett's was a perfect example. Does so well to put in the kick and then tackles Tedesco before he even catches. Mate, look up and play for the football. Same thing happened in the first half about 3 times.
Reckon he would have made a much better effort on Maloney for our first try. Who knows if that would have had an effect though.
Shame Milf got concussed and missed most of the 2nd half. Could have come into his own towards the end and at least given us a sniff. Solid debut otherwise. Boyd for mine didn't do enough. Bring Slater in, Boyd to the wing...Gagai to the centres. Fuck Oneil off never to been seen again in the maroon jersey. Hold the door open for Myles as well. Thanks for the memories Nate. Bring in J.Wallace. Bring JT back Bring on Game 2.
It wouldn't. 60m a set, complete middle third dominance, line breaks being made at will on our right edge and Fifita destroying us through the middle...Not a fucking difference to the result. Boyd's main failing was having too much time and taking the wrong option or executing poorly but we spent so little time in your 20 that the result would not have been any different.
Oh yeah definitely. The reason I brought it up is that the only way we hypothetically lose that game with Slater in in place of Boyd is if we failed to score that early try and just lost confidence in our attacking ability despite having all the ball. Hard to imagine though.
To NSW winning or not? Fuck no. Not unless, as AVA said, they totally dropped their bundle and just went full retard with errors and frustration. How can you look at a match like that where one side is so dominant with field position and think one missed tackle out of 50 could've made a difference to the overall result? And that's assuming Slater actually makes the tackle. Given Slater has made worse misses than that playing fullback for QLD in the past, it's not even worth speculating.
Napa apparently made 110m from 11 runs. That is pretty bloody impressive in a dominated pack. Well done, son. Put some monster shots on too.
I can take the heavy loss, the total outclassing, and the dominance through the middle. But there's no excuse for defending the way we did. Thurston and Slater won't make a difference if we're Swiss cheese again. Tedesco scoring from dummy half, 10m out. And running through a gap in the middle big enough to fit a semi trailer through. O'Neill doing 360's and still missing two or three times in the one play. It's just not fucking good enough. Even Smith and McGuire were technically poor at times. It was borderline embarrassing.