justhanging said:
Manly Sea Eagles are simply the better team and deserved to win. they don't make mistakes in the way the Warriors do. no room for errors in a Grand Final. also their set-play is amazing. all the rapid passing from left to right across the field is bewildering, dizzying and hard to combat. I wondered at times if Warriors had ANY set-pieces prepared as they approached the Manly try-line, or whether they were just winging it and hoping for the best. where was the planning and preparation on attack?
Warriors play the Warriors game and Manly play the Manly game, there is no point in the Warriors trying to play the Manly game. We have always had an unstructured approach to our attack and that is what troubles other teams. Manly spread it side to side using second man plays which, if you catch them setting for it, is easy to read and can be defended against. The catch is that you have to be able to recognise the structure in place before they do it. Teams get coached on this and know how to combat it. Many times yesterday you saw the Warriors defensive line sliding to cover the second man plays and it was more individual brilliance or unfortunate luck which lead to the Manly tries rather than this.
The Warriors use structure to get to a certain point on the field and/or get the opposition team on the back foot momentum-wise, then they revert to unstructured play with offloads and using certain players (eg. Johnson, Locke, Mateo) instinctive genius to open holes in the defence. The advantage of this is that it *can't* be coached against because you never know exactly how they're going to do this. You can coach to stop the offload and that will work 80-90% of the time, but it only takes one instance for it to work. The disadvantages are that it can look ugly and if the defence is up to it, it looks uninspiring and rudderless. I think thought the fact that we got to the Grand Final shows that when playing highly structured teams like the Storm, it really works. The Tigers are another proponent of this but they also cover it with some brilliantly structured fluid backline movement so really, they take the best of both worlds. But then they didn't make it to the Grand Final either. (Sorry Neil
)
I got round to watching the game last night (altho not the final 5-8 minutes - too raw and painful right now heh) and it was really apparent how crucial some of those ref calls were in deciding the outcome of the match. For the first 30 minutes, it was extremely even, and then a few ref blunders (a non call on a strip on Mateo, a non call on an obstruction on Heremaia, a non call on Watmoughs horrible play the ball) lead to both Manly tries. Ouch. I'll take nothing away from Hoppas offload to Stewart for his try though, that was brilliant. A big play for the big game. What a player!
We started poorly in the second half and couldn't match our intensity of the first 30 minutes and it cost us big. Crucial errors let us down and we couldn't get the field position we really needed to get back in the game. Then Manly were 18-2 up and we were desperate. Kudos to the boys for fighting back well, I think it was around this time that I lost my voice heh, but Manly were always too good and held us off. But they were really blowing during this period. Add Maloney's two missed conversions, minus Manlys tries which were made after bad ref calls.... Shit... How different it might have been... But that's sport!
Another thing I noticed at the ground was the length of time Manly's trainers stayed out on the field. You don't see it on the tv but for long portions of the game (I'd say 65 minutes of the game) they were out there, just sitting in behind the Manly line, directly giving orders or instructions from the coach or pointing out things to the playmakers. Fuck this bullshit. I want to see a rule which says the trainers can ONLY come onto the field after a try or during an injury. God knows what advantages they gave the team by giving them extra sets of eyes and a direct line from the coach who sees more while sitting up high in the stands. It was a joke. We were screaming at the ref to order them off, it was ridiculous.
FURTHERMORE (
) I want to see the NRL crack down on this bullshit of players staying down to get the video ref to look over plays looking for an indiscretion. It was a big part of the final series and it worked for us and against us but it's complete bullshit. Players are staying down intentionally and it's starting to turn into a circus. I don't want to see league become like soccer. Remove the video refs right to rule on general play during an injury stoppage and stop the bullshit now.
![[quote]](http://static.biggie.co.nz/img/dis/message_quote.png "Quote message"){kind=small}
Hoping Bluey will get in Krisnans head asap to let him know he is wanted and loved so he can fufill his destiny to be one of the greatest Warriors of all time
![](<img src="http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5893/krisnan620.jpg" alt="" />)