The Game-What really happened?

[ROC181]

Im interested to know from all on why they believe it was a close game rather than the cricket score we’ve been dishing out to others.

In a way I was hoping this was like past games, with the exception of the Storm game last week. It seems to me that for the last two weeks we have been playing too flat not allowing our backs to have room to make breaks. Or it could be that the storm and raiders were quick in defence and gave us no room to give players like Mitchell or Manu to do their thing. In the last two games it seemed that the tactics were to defend our way through it and counter attack. In fact the two winning tries for our last two games came from having to defend our arses off and then attack from our quarter. Great defence we have but it was disappointing that we couldn’t play it like when we demolished souffs. Was defence the tactics that Robbo wanted or was this just a consequence of what the opposition let us do?

[zac]

Maybe something like -

Raiders and Storm had long periods where they played very well

Keary's ankle injury meant our attack wasn't firing on all cylinders

That said, I'm not complaining. Our defence was as good as has ever been seen on that stage.

[chicka]

Im interested to know from all on why they believe it was a close game rather than the cricket score we’ve been dishing out to others.

Good question and probably quite a few factors contributing to why it was so close.

One thing is that I reckon quite a few of ours were more busted than they were letting on. I noticed right at the kick off that Mitch looked to be really stiff in one leg and wasn't surprised when he had to come off.

Throw in guys like Cords and SST who had pretty much just come back from injury and Keary who admitted he was limited in his running and it's no wonder that the players go into a type of siege mentality and knew that it was going to be a war of attrition. The great thing is we never wavered once even when Cronk got 10 in the bin and grinded out the win against what many would consider to be the ultimate grind team of 2019.

Robbo did say we can play it anyway the opposition like and they kind of turned out to be prophetic words because that's what we ultimately had to do.

[Johnny Tobin]

The turning point for me was the silly penalty Radley gave when we had them for the taking.

They were really under the pump. We had scored and they were working their way out of their end and he let all the pressure off. Then he gave the next penalty when Wighton dived and they were all of a sudden in the game.

Had we kept the pressure on and scored again it could have been a cricket score.

[Bruce Pickett]

The turning point for me was the silly penalty Radley gave when we had them for the taking.

They were really under the pump. We had scored and they were working their way out of their end and he let all the pressure off. Then he gave the next penalty when Wighton dived and they were all of a sudden in the game.

Had we kept the pressure on and scored again it could have been a cricket score.

I was thinking the same. If it had got to 14-0, the unfettered Roosters could have gone wild.
We were very conservative in attack-maybe due to Keary's ankle injury. Defences, courage and grit won us the game.

[Jacks Fur Coat]

The difference was they handled the pressure well. Most teams would have folded against us in that environment. They were able to dominate territory and possession for long stints and we were left with the counter punch requirement to put them away. And we did that as only a champion team can.

[dice]

Maubs a big loss. They not only scored where he would have been defending, we lost the opportunity to inject Chrichton vs a tiring defence.

Apart from that, a combination of the Raiders defending very well, and us playing too conservatively. As though we expected to win on defence alone once we hit the lead. There was probably some truth to that right up until the point Cronk was sin binned, which ironically forced us to start playing footy again.

I also suggest we could have scored more tries in the last 10 mins but reverted to trying to win it on defence alone. I reckon we would have won even if they hit the lead with Cronk in the bin.

[rented tracksuit]

The turning point for me was the silly penalty Radley gave when we had them for the taking.

They were really under the pump. We had scored and they were working their way out of their end and he let all the pressure off. Then he gave the next penalty when Wighton dived and they were all of a sudden in the game.

Had we kept the pressure on and scored again it could have been a cricket score.

This. Why has this not been discussed more yet? I thought it was a crap penalty. Reminded of a soccer player they way he carried on.

[easts4eva]

I watched it twice now, ( prolly again today lol)
but attack wise I think we we're a little to paranoid about them stripping the ball...So a lot of one out stuff. We we're far to conservative, later in the 2nd half our natural game surfaced.

[ism22]

Same... particularly being in Canberra, I can't wait for the raw emotions and 'we was robbed' BS to calm down so we can have a proper analysis of the game.

As a dump for preliminary observations:
- Cronk and Keary didn't train all week.
- Including Jake and not Tetevano was a massive gamble IMO. This was compounded when Maubs went down injured early on. IMO this was a big turning point for our momentum as we were up 8-0 and the flan woulda been to put some fresh forwards on at a more strategic moment.
- The Raiders kicked well and trapped us in the back corner on multiple occasions. Particularly in the second half, we didn't really get any opportunities.
- Our defence was flawless aside from one (Tedesco?) knock-on that led to a try.
- It was a gritty win that required us to find a second tank of fuel outta nowhere. We only had a rotation of 2 bench forwards and (without commenting on the refs), we defended our way through a testing spell with 12 players.
- In the end, we had less opportunities but we were the more disciplined side. On paper we had less runs and less metres but more completions.
- The Raiders also defended really well. In saying that, I reckon we played a pretty conservative game, conserved our energy and didn't let our blood pressure rise too high. To our credit this meant we not only scored the winning try, we defended our lead for a good 10 minutes.
- The Raiders never got ahead. A quiet achiever was Sam Verrills, who scored a cheeky try (not unlike a Cook try) and put us on the front foot. An overall theme was that we were always ahead and the Raiders were always playing catch-up. I do marathons rather than sprints these days and it felt like one of those moments where a highly competitive, strapping ADFA student (I'm in Canberra) steps on my heels for a few kilometres during a training run before running outta breath. You always know it's an ADFA dude because they march along like a soldier (very hard foot strikes), borrow your cadence and assume they'll be able to muscle you outta the way with testosterone. However, experience always beats raw testosterone coz you've done it before so know how to get the job done (even if they are 15 years younger, stick to a strict diet and do 10,000 push-ups a day). I felt we had that kinda edge the whole game and they didn't have enough breath left at the end to kick ahead of us. They tried though and (IMO aided by a bit of bad luck on our behalf) they gave us an epic battle.
- We had less opportunities but made the most of what we had.
- Unfortunately Latrell's kicking was off. However, I felt it was a defensive strategy that we were gifted by way of being ahead. We could kick, miss (because bother were from the sideline) and then get the ball back. We didn't need to force tries or get over-excited, we just needed to hold the fukking ball and end our sets in a way that would limit the Raiders' ability to score. And that we did... we kept them scoreless in the second half, which was exactly what needed doing (no more, no less). Our greater completion rate (plus completions) despite having significantly less ball was a telling feature of our game.
- Our winning try was one of the best I've seen all season. It was a team try at the right moment. Raiders fans talk as if we were gifted it because we made it look so easy but I mean... you only score those tries when 4 players are 100% on song. There was no gap. The ref didn't create confusion. We created that try and anybody who has watched Keary, Latrell, Tupou and Teddy all season can respect the brilliance involved. Those 4 created that opportunity outta nowhere, not the refs. One can whinge about the call all they like but the Raiders had 80 minutes to show they had a try like that in them. They simply didn't... and if they did, our defence was too good.
- It was a smart, highly calculated win more than anything. We had a plan to lock the Raiders out, regardless of injuries, sin-bins, penalties...etc. We blocked out all those considerations and stuck to our infamous Bondi Wall. Hearing Cronk speak on Monday Morning, he's very happy not to have to make a tackle or be tackled by anybody else ever again. Physically I reckon we were nowhere near 100% after a hard slog of a season. We knew that and showed up with our brains rather than a plan to blow them out of the park. It worked... we did no better and no worse than we had to.

I find it unfortunate that n00bz/whingers have clouded the whole thing with 'controversy' as it was legitimately one of the best games I've seen all season. We were down so I actually think we played at 90% (due to circumstances rather than effort) and still won against a team that was maybe 85% as good as our best. Just my opinion though.

[Cockadoodledoo]

Without going into too much detail, we have to consider that Canberra had statistically the best defence in the competition, when defending inside their 20. Not that we were in their 20 often in the second half. The problem I saw with our attack and it was not just the Grand Final but the prelim and many other games this season, is that our attack was too much side to side, which was pretty easy to contain. We needed to run more direct and to have more plays, where our outside runners, especially Manu, Mitchell and Crichton would cut back inside, against the grain, when we did go wide. Crichton showed how effective that was against Melbourne.

[milanja]

Can’t remember but who let wighton through? Cordner/Cronk?, that was awful, Made him look like a superstar.

[rented tracksuit]

Can’t remember but who let wighton through? Cordner/Cronk?, that was awful, Made him look like a superstar.

Yep, that was our worst play for the entire finals series.

[The Axe]

Can’t remember but who let wighton through? Cordner/Cronk?, that was awful, Made him look like a superstar.

Li think Cordener and Crichton. Cords trapped on RHS

[Kelby]

Injuries I think played there part. I lot were carrying.

Losing Aubs in the 1st ten, really depleted us with Friendy on the bench for a limited stint.

Cronk in the bin for 10, wtf?


But:

WE WON