2016 Rd 4 V Titans: Game Day

[gerg]

When does Dean Pay start getting some scrutiny?

Absolutely. Our defence is still our glaring weakness. Leaking 20 + ppg is disgraceful, regardless of the injuries and we aren't going to win anything that matters.

[T_R]

From the coach. He knows we cant score points missing Austin and Sezer, so he asks the team to defend leads, which we're incapable of doing.

With Austin or Sezer i think given the chances we had against the Knights and Titans, we probably have 30+ points in each game instead of 20 and 24.
We're going to get belted next week against the dogs. So we'll be 2-2-1 and then hopefully we have BOTH back on board in round 6 against the Eels

One would think our captain would be aware of this glaring fact, but apparently not because every time there's a chance for Croker to go for goal, he'll go for it. Taking that 2 when we're ahead by 12 when he knows we cannot defend a lead was THE stupidest decision. One more try would have broken them but our captain is too dumb to realise that even though he's on the field.

We look like a dumb football team.

The Raiders lost.


3

2

1


Aaaaaaaaaaaand....

IronRaiden.

In this case, it's not even a good try. Of course moving to a 14 point lead is the smart thing to do.

[timofy]

Secondly you don't really think the captain is making these calls rogue do you? That would be embarrassing.
The fact we ALWAYS take the 2 suggests to me this is a very deliberate decision that is almost certainly on coaches orders

Yeah Ricky spends every (home) game on the sideline and he seems to make the call. Saw it against Penrith, his hand went straight up with 2 fingers so would be less than surprised if he made the call on the weekend.

That said, I agreed with the call on the weekend. Our defense and ill-discipline lost us that game.

[DJ89]

Not sure if it has been mentioned here, but does anyone think Rapana could have caught the ball in goal the set before the Titans scored? Would have been a 20 m restart.

He definitely could have and if he did we would likely have won. Do I blame him? Not at all. Like pig said he had no way of knowing what was coming at him and played it safe.

I don't blame Rapana either. He played exceptionally well.

In real time I thought he needed to just knock the ball dead, but to think if communication was a little better we could have wrapped the game up is a little frustrating.

[Botman]

Yep, in that circumstance it's really up to the other players to let Rapana know he's got time to catch it. A little inexperience from Brenko on that one

[myanonymoususername]

When does Dean Pay start getting some scrutiny?

Absolutely. Our defence is still our glaring weakness. Leaking 20 + ppg is disgraceful, regardless of the injuries and we aren't going to win anything that matters.

Not only that, its the softness of a lot of the tries that's a bother. That points to me to laziness among the players. You can see that in other things too, like how bad they are at handling grubbers to the in-goal and also how slow to get to dropped balls on the ground.

[Shadow Boxer]

The Stuart haters are really loving the loss this week, imagine if we get two in a row.

[Notaroboticfish]

I seem to remember seeing the trainer sticking up two fingers.

EDIT: That may have been the Mounties game

[-GD-]

From the coach. He knows we cant score points missing Austin and Sezer, so he asks the team to defend leads, which we're incapable of doing.

With Austin or Sezer i think given the chances we had against the Knights and Titans, we probably have 30+ points in each game instead of 20 and 24.
We're going to get belted next week against the dogs. So we'll be 2-2-1 and then hopefully we have BOTH back on board in round 6 against the Eels

One would think our captain would be aware of this glaring fact, but apparently not because every time there's a chance for Croker to go for goal, he'll go for it. Taking that 2 when we're ahead by 12 when he knows we cannot defend a lead was THE stupidest decision. One more try would have broken them but our captain is too dumb to realise that even though he's on the field.

We look like a dumb football team.

You don't really believe Croker makes the call for penalty do you?

[Riaan]

Not sure if it has been mentioned here, but does anyone think Rapana could have caught the ball in goal the set before the Titans scored? Would have been a 20 m restart.

This was probably one of the biggest stuff ups in the game. He should have definitely caught it, it was a rubbish kick but at that stage the entire team seemed to be in a complete panic, hence the dumb decision to knock it dead when the opposing winger was no where in sight.

[LP Raider]

Not sure if it has been mentioned here, but does anyone think Rapana could have caught the ball in goal the set before the Titans scored? Would have been a 20 m restart.

This was probably one of the biggest stuff ups in the game. He should have definitely caught it, it was a rubbish kick but at that stage the entire team seemed to be in a complete panic, hence the dumb decision to knock it dead when the opposing winger was no where in sight.

The second biggest stuff up was Lima's hit on Bird on the 4th tackle, the ensuing set led to Shillo's try.

That's 3 idiotic instances in the first 4 rounds, initially I was against sitting out BJ this week however I'm not against now.

[Toviii]

This Rapana talk is not helping...

[Matt]

From the coach. He knows we cant score points missing Austin and Sezer, so he asks the team to defend leads, which we're incapable of doing.

With Austin or Sezer i think given the chances we had against the Knights and Titans, we probably have 30+ points in each game instead of 20 and 24.
We're going to get belted next week against the dogs. So we'll be 2-2-1 and then hopefully we have BOTH back on board in round 6 against the Eels

One would think our captain would be aware of this glaring fact, but apparently not because every time there's a chance for Croker to go for goal, he'll go for it. Taking that 2 when we're ahead by 12 when he knows we cannot defend a lead was THE stupidest decision. One more try would have broken them but our captain is too dumb to realise that even though he's on the field.

We look like a dumb football team.

You don't really believe Croker makes the call for penalty do you?

ANYONE at thd ground will tell you Ricky made the call from the bench. He was waving 2 fingers in the air like he just dont care.
If you think taking the 2 and pushing tge lead to 14 is the reason we lost, you are kidding yourself. It was a combo of Shillos ridiculously easy try and FPN stupidity in the last 15-20 mins that did it

[Seiffert82]

Every coach and every captain in the NRL would have taken the 14 point lead...or the 8 point lead, or the 20 point lead for that matter.

[-TW-]

From the coach. He knows we cant score points missing Austin and Sezer, so he asks the team to defend leads, which we're incapable of doing.

With Austin or Sezer i think given the chances we had against the Knights and Titans, we probably have 30+ points in each game instead of 20 and 24.
We're going to get belted next week against the dogs. So we'll be 2-2-1 and then hopefully we have BOTH back on board in round 6 against the Eels

One would think our captain would be aware of this glaring fact, but apparently not because every time there's a chance for Croker to go for goal, he'll go for it. Taking that 2 when we're ahead by 12 when he knows we cannot defend a lead was THE stupidest decision. One more try would have broken them but our captain is too dumb to realise that even though he's on the field.

We look like a dumb football team.

You don't really believe Croker makes the call for penalty do you?

ANYONE at thd ground will tell you Ricky made the call from the bench. He was waving 2 fingers in the air like he just dont care.
If you think taking the 2 and pushing tge lead to 14 is the reason we lost, you are kidding yourself. It was a combo of Shillos ridiculously easy try and FPN stupidity in the last 15-20 mins that did it

Or the fact we absolutely had no intent after that penalty goal, same as last week

[Seiffert82]

Don't know about having no intent, but our execution was appalling. No real plan attacking their line (when was the last time we bombed for Edrick Lee for a start) and our composure coming out of our half was disgraceful.

I don't think the boys gave up or threw in the towel, but they just abandoned the basics.

[zim]

All we really had to do that game was not drop so much ball and we win. As soon as they started to get on top we started dropping ball and it gave them the repeated sets of 6.
Whitehead and Papalii both did it when we finally got some ball.

[The Nickman]

All we really had to do that game was not drop so much ball and we win. As soon as they started to get on top we started dropping ball and it gave them the repeated sets of 6.
Whitehead and Papalii both did it when we finally got some ball.

Yep, this sums up my thoughts exactly.

Also, the Titans were VERY good at controlling the football in the second half. All they did was complete their sets, wait for us to shoot ourselves in the foot repeatedly and then finish over the top of us with some very soft tries.

If we'd just controlled the football in that last fifteen minutes we win that game, and we win it easily, even after the David Shillington debarkle.

[myanonymoususername]

Just think, after tonight's game, had we played even the last 2 minutes of the Titans game with even an ounce of intelligence, we'd be top of the table instead of middle of the pack. That is going to bite us on the **** later in the season as we try to scrape into the finals instead of being comfortably in.

[-TW-]

Don't know about having no intent, but our execution was appalling. No real plan attacking their line (when was the last time we bombed for Edrick Lee for a start) and our composure coming out of our half was disgraceful.

I don't think the boys gave up or threw in the towel, but they just abandoned the basics.

Not so much they gave up, I've seen them do that enough times but just seemed to go flat after that

The line speed dropped off and they ran through us like a cheap curry, bar Vaughan and Boyd when they came back on everyone got dominated.

It's the same stuff we saw last year

[Aero]

The most disappointing thing about the game was that the first 3 tries that Titans scored were all soft.
So much for having a fortress if our defensive line is pretty much a turnstile

[IronRaiden]

From the coach. He knows we cant score points missing Austin and Sezer, so he asks the team to defend leads, which we're incapable of doing.

With Austin or Sezer i think given the chances we had against the Knights and Titans, we probably have 30+ points in each game instead of 20 and 24.
We're going to get belted next week against the dogs. So we'll be 2-2-1 and then hopefully we have BOTH back on board in round 6 against the Eels

One would think our captain would be aware of this glaring fact, but apparently not because every time there's a chance for Croker to go for goal, he'll go for it. Taking that 2 when we're ahead by 12 when he knows we cannot defend a lead was THE stupidest decision. One more try would have broken them but our captain is too dumb to realise that even though he's on the field.

We look like a dumb football team.

Firstly going up 14 with under 20 to go is always an easy decision
Secondly you don't really think the captain is making these calls rogue do you? That would be embarrassing.
The fact we ALWAYS take the 2 suggests to me this is a very deliberate decision that is almost certainly on coaches orders

When you can defend yes it is, but when you can't defend it's smarter to go for more points. And the fact the decision to go for 2 two weeks in a row has cost us says we have a dumb captain and a dumb coach.

[IronRaiden]

From the coach. He knows we cant score points missing Austin and Sezer, so he asks the team to defend leads, which we're incapable of doing.

With Austin or Sezer i think given the chances we had against the Knights and Titans, we probably have 30+ points in each game instead of 20 and 24.
We're going to get belted next week against the dogs. So we'll be 2-2-1 and then hopefully we have BOTH back on board in round 6 against the Eels

One would think our captain would be aware of this glaring fact, but apparently not because every time there's a chance for Croker to go for goal, he'll go for it. Taking that 2 when we're ahead by 12 when he knows we cannot defend a lead was THE stupidest decision. One more try would have broken them but our captain is too dumb to realise that even though he's on the field.

We look like a dumb football team.

You don't really believe Croker makes the call for penalty do you?

ANYONE at thd ground will tell you Ricky made the call from the bench. He was waving 2 fingers in the air like he just dont care.
If you think taking the 2 and pushing tge lead to 14 is the reason we lost, you are kidding yourself. It was a combo of Shillos ridiculously easy try and FPN stupidity in the last 15-20 mins that did it

Taking the 2 switched the team off which lead to the soft tries. The score was irrelevant as we have capitulated two weeks in a row due to our captain/coach taking the 2 and effectively telling the team, "we've done enough to win". If the captain and coach haven't worked this out yet then maybe we want some smarter people making these decisions.

[greeneyed]

Gallery: Around the Grounds Round Four: http://www.raiders.com.au/news/2016/03/ ... the_g.html

[Sid]

R. James found not guilty of twisting Rapana's leg.. Guess they're accusing Rapana of 'a dive'

[RedRaider]

All we really had to do that game was not drop so much ball and we win. As soon as they started to get on top we started dropping ball and it gave them the repeated sets of 6.
Whitehead and Papalii both did it when we finally got some ball.

Elliott Whiteheads three second half errors sure didn't help, but in Papa's case the ball was definitely knocked out by a Titans player which the Refs didn't see but the camera's did.

But for me it's all about the Defence or lack of. 16 missed tackles in the 2nd half, 4 by Sia. 4 missed tackles in one half of footy from such a fine player suggests an injury to me. Brenko also missed 3 in the 2nd half and Rapana 2. The Titans went after our right side D and it was found wanting. The Titans, as Nickman said, controlled the footy completing 18 of 19 second half sets. (Source: NRL stats). If the 'stand still' Raiders defensive line is employed against the Dogs they will have a field day against us - first choice halves back or not.