Quote: Rooted Red "I'm sure we miss his influence on the field. However, it's the sheer number of tackles he used to make in a game that we miss the most. In addition, our next best defensive player last season was [sizeSwain and we let him go too.[/size
[sizeThat leaves a big hole to fill in our defense, and form the evidence so far it doesn't look as though we've come to terms with this at all.[/sizeOur biggest problem however, as all regular speccies know, is that our forwards,(Props in particular) don't make enough go forward when they have the ball and are dominated physically when they don't have it. No matter how talented out back line is, we just can't operate under these circumstances.'"
The defensive problem we had on Sunday i believe was more to do with the amount of possesion we allowed the Crusaders to have. For example we made 105 tackles more than them. Wild made 43 tackles, Adamson 38, Godwin 36 and Sidlow 35. They basically started to wear us down after about 55 minutes and we didn't have the energy to close them down quick enough after that. Our forwards made a lot of tackles even by Alker and Swain's high workrate standards. For instance Alker averaged 40 tackles a game last year and Swain averaged 33.
