Trojan Horse:The Avenger:Trojan Horse:
I don’t think we run out of bodies and we were right in that till around 50 minutes.
What let us down in that game was two things for me and it wasn’t the lack of forwards at all.
1. The discipline and errors. That second half we continually squandered possession in the kr half and turned over cheap ball. That led to inviting KR on our line way more than needed.
2. The spine shuffle half time with moving positions. That affected our attack a lot and defence on the left was left short more than a few times.
Honestly though I thought Lino was excellent last week but this week he cost us dearly with stray passing, kicking out on full etc. it led to a number of pressure sets on our line. He will I’m sure come back strong.
I thought we gifted KR that game more than them taking it. We continually invited them onto our line and it told a few times on the edges.
All of which are down to fatigue!
We are stretched thin right across the spectrum and have done amazingly to cope, however as soon as we’re placed under further pressure we have no more capacity to deal with it and that’s what we saw last night.
We placed ourselves under pressure and we were making mistakes at the start of the second half. That wasn’t due to fatigue at all in my opinion. The result however of the errors, turning over possession resulted in fatigue. That’s not the same as fatigue causing the issues.
Pitts short pass to Vagana at the line that was poor and uncharacteristic.
Lino kicking out on the full leading to KR set on our line.
Lino passing to Walmsley ankles on second tackle turning over possession in kr half.
Another Lino passing that went in to touch on halfway.
All these and a couple of relieving penalties for KR ultimately ended up with us being fatigued but weren’t the cause.
The defence in the middle was actually stern up to the end but the shuffle round of the spine meant we were caught short a man on the edges a couple of times. Again more a system thing due to changes than fatigue.
Had we not made some of those error that resulted in try’s we would have been within 1-2 scores and still right in it late on.
You may not agree but that’s how the game played out for me on the pitch.
One concerning thing for me though and I’m interested to see what others think is the referee Jack Smith.
When Hall tried to play ball and Broadbent put his leg over Hall twice so he couldn’t get up, then when Hall was getting up Broadbent ragged Hall down by the shirt collar. How on this earth did Smith call Hall over and tell him to cut it out?
There was some battles between them previous but for the referee to disregard 2/3 penalty offences by Broadbent and then reprimand Hall whom he seemed to have his teeth into for some reason was very strange from the official.
Though Smith always rips into us at the ruck, same vs Leigh where he constantly shouts down Trinity players and penalises for ruck offences.
The other thing I didn’t like was when we went 10-6 up and there’d been no penalties for half hour and he penalised a single trinity player a step offside. The next set for KR 3 were offside and nothing. I can’t understand the consistency of how it’s applied sometimes. If you penalise a marginal offside but don’t do it consistently it doesn’t make sense to me.
The ref comments are solely on those incidents though which I found strange.
We were fatigued before we started the game, tired minds and tired bodies after weeks of playing above and beyond with little to no rotation and a number of players playing out of position and or coming back from their own injuries.Decisions like that of Pitts were the result of that fatigue.
