It's all complete and utter speculation cos if Campo stays on that play never happens. But if it happened while he was on the field I am certain he ould have told Archer we'll take the 2 and immediately place the ball and line up the goal himself. I know from the outset Croker would miss. Didn't matter. Couldn't see Canberra winning in golden point anyway let alone next week.
No reason for him not to be practising though. Teams usually have two or three players do kicking training together, just in case. I'm sure Campo's in that group with Croker and maybe Dugan too.
Reckon the bloke who's played for NSW and Australia, is co-captain and the star of the team would realise it's not the time and place for a 20 year old rookie kicker no matter how good he is.
I reckon he played Burt's kick through his head a few times (both being left foot kickers) hence why he over-compensated and hooked it.
It was a straightforward kick and Croker's kicked at 85 percent for the year, no way would Campese have taken that kick. Imagine the shit that would be going down if he'd missed like Croker had.
Kicking from 30m+ out is never particularly simple as you have less margin for error. If the posts were 2m closer to him it would've been a goal (ie. if he'd kicked from 29m out on the same angle). It was on his wrong side too, not to mention the pressure attached to it... always a 50/50 shot IMO, even for an 85% kicker.
Haha, the miss wasn't really what I'd call a bad strike anyway tbh. Obviously wasn't perfect but he struck it well enough and it would've gone straight between the posts if he'd kicked it from the distance kickers usually kick it from on that angle.
Brisbane are weird though. They really shouldn't rely on Lockyer that much; I think it's a mental thing as much as anything. Particularly for Wallace - he's good enough to guide a team around without Lockyer; he just freezes. The Cowboys surprisingly actually did pretty well in their games without Thurston this year - early on when the games still mattered, anyway - particularly when you consider how badly they went when he was there.
Agreed. Of all things, their defence just plain goes to to shit without him. I think it's the experience factor. Brisbane have no other player over 28 iirc and the majority are under 24.
50/50 I'd seriously be surprised if he couldn't make that kick at least 80% of the time, with or without that type of pressure.
