Agreed - Manly knew they could win without him - he was not required for this game

My thoughts are that this result was not a surprise to many people here. Manly are a very, very good side and we have had a sluggish start this year. Defence has been good but not really sharp on attack - Burrow and Webb are really missed in that department. I think that showed last night. It was our inability to put pressure on in attack that overworked our defence.
Positives are that maybe there won't be any hangover from this game (and hopefully no long term injuries like with Toopi last year), and it will focus the guys on improving. We have some players to get back and some to sharpen up (Ali doesn't look right). Also, once again, we show that at club level we can compete with the best Aussie teams, and that we are better organised defensively than at international level.
Manly should be congratulated, they played great rugby and looked well prepared, but odds are that like Melbourne last year, they won't retain their title. Shame our competition isn't as unpredictable.
When British teams have lost this fixture in the past it's been by a thrashing. Leeds, even on an off day seem capable of containing the best club side in the world. The rest of SL might not be scoring many against us this year.

FFS get your facts right It was not a "fair point" d!pst!ck, it was FACT. Try & think before you post Davy boy - I know you get very excited when Leeds lose but try to calm down.

You made a big enough plonker of yourself when Tony Smith was Coach, but you never seem to learn any lessons Ps was you like this at school ??

PPS are you still at school

FFS What a waste of space Try to keep up Davy - read up on matters before you make another fool of yourself

Learn to quote FFS.

Summed up perfectly

IMO, if we can play like that against super league teams we will destroy most of them if we can cut out a few silly errors
I thought there was far too many missed tackels, they were gaining 3 or 4 meteres every time when they should have been stopped. We looked dangerous when we shipped the ball out which i think we don't do enough. But overall beaten by a better side. although they seemed to be offside at every play of the ball!

Again!!

This was evident most of last season but most on here simply ignored it because we won the GF again

strange game, compelling and top notch in parts,

we didnt play well all game, too many missed passes, to many errors early in the count, and not enough composure at times

didnt like the ref, didnt like how he reffed the game, i dont think it benefitted either side or affected the result a whole lot but his judgement at the ptb seemed completely random,

i though smith played well, Ali too, and Ryan Hall was pretty safe imo, a few were bagging him in the alst few weeks, i thought he stood up well against a quality wing/centre partnership, in fact i would go as far as to say Senior and Hall were the better partnership over their opposite numbers,

i thought Watkins stood up well for a 17 year old lad against a top top quality centre/wing partnership, didnt do anything amazing, but wasnt completely outclassed either,

where we lost the game? well i think burrow definately hurt us when he went off, he gives us creation int he centre, and can fill in to a very high level at dummy half, JJB had to play there, and though he stood up ok, we lost speed at the ptb, and we lost his impact around the fringes

Bailey seems to have lost a lot of weight, as does Kirke, i worry we are a little light if Eastwood doest get here

Ablett was poor, i dont know about him he is a big strong lad, decent footwork, decent speed, has an offload and can break a tackle, but too often he seems off the pace a bit to me, he seems to make horrendous errors from time to time and silly decisions he is 23 now, he needs to kick on this season, he has the ability there, but it seems a little lost at the moment, maybe the positional changes he has to do every game arent helping, i think the start of the season has shown maybe Watkins is a year away from being ready for a full time 1st team berth


overall, Manly were awesome for 10 minutes, pure top quality RL, they were the best team on the night by a fair bit, i dont think we took the WCC as seriously as last year, i think had it been a GF or semi or a big game, we would have seen burrow come back on. This game for me encapsulates why we need to give the WCC a higher proirity, sunday night was a good game, those two sides, full strength, in full flow, going all out for it? it would be the stuff of legend

im a little worried, 4th game of the season, 4th poor-average performance we are nowhere near where we were this time last year in terms of quality and performance, then again 3 wins, top of the league,

i think we are down a quality centre, and 2nd row/prop at the moment, and we must have a fair amount of cap space available, i dont think we are desperate for anyone, but i think we are a couple of players away from a great great side

agree smokey

i would like to see gibson get a game on sunday. a specialist centre he is steady and good defensively.
ablett gets caught in the centres against speed and better footwork, as most 2nd rowers would. he would benefit from a move into the pack permenantly.
we do lack size, i worry a lot of the team have slimmed down too much. donald, for me, is far,far better on the left and i think he is wasted on the right.
manly were supurb, a joy to watch.big and aggresive yet most of them had great footwork and boy did they have some pace. we did supurbly to stay so close and in have nothing but praise for all 17 players in white

What were my thoughts? I thought Manly were very good. They defended with real strength and attacked with great speed and accuracy. We looked slow and ponderous by comparison but in reality our performance would still have won most SL games this year, and therein lies a problem.

There are some fundamentals which need to be addressed within our game to enable us to compete at the same level as the likes of Manly, who for me were the first Aussie team to take this match seriously for years.

We need to allow a longer wrestle at the ptb to stop dummy half running. This would mean that halfbacks would have to learn how to unlock defences once they were set, rather than just use individual pace to turn a defence around. We also need to find a way to curb the amount of average overseas players in our league and have the balls to promote youth, which was a major part of the franchise idea.

We should force each club to employ two specialist coaches, who are solely employed to teach the local amateur coaches how to teach the kids properly. This could be a pre-requisite for a franchise, and would mean that when a player comes into a professional environment he doesn't need to be taught the basics. We should also find a way to get the amateur game played in summer when the weather is better not only for matches but also for training.

We should stop flogging our players by playing so many games each season and give them more time to recover (mentally and physically) between seasons. If the season lasted from the first weekend in March to the first weekend in September, this would be more than enough and would allow the "lesser" clubs to spend more time preparing their players for a more intense season.

There are so many things that we need to consider changing to be able to reach the consistent level of performance that Manly produced yesterday, I just hope that we have the courage to recognise it rather than bury our heads in "the best season of Super League ever"....