Welcome to League of Titans

Round 2: BULLDOGS vs TITANS (2025)

Rewatched it now;

Honestly, I think we'll be fine. Generally. However we literally have like 3 or 4 generationally idiotic plays in us weekly, that much still hasn't changed. Tino was amazing, Moe, however, not so much. The jersey sucks though, buuuut the 'EMF' sponsor on the sleeves would be pretty naughty in the place of Lottery Office on the front. But yeah, im glad we scored some points and competed, for now.
 
I think it's the errors and Moe/others defensive shit, Cut Moe/Dave for hustlers if we're getting barely any attacking stats from them....

I don't care if Dave and Moe are in Q cup about "money"... Others can do a better job at this point imo which is crazy to say.
 
Cowabunga said:
1st try, Reed offside by a mile in front of the ref + shoulder charge from Montoya, You'd hope they'd hold them out and they got kind of close but it's tough and Kikau is one of the best/created from what I remember that out the back play and Jojo overcommitted to Xerri and Sami was a touch late on Kikau but they nearly stopped it.

2nd try, Kini gets the 20m restart and Lofi cops the 50/50 and Moe overdoes it and Preston cruises through, Tino could have been closer which happened a couple of times but he'll get there.

3rd, Everyone kind of does as good of a job on Kikau as much as possible but he gets the offload which happens..... Moe is being lazy but Fermor is the worst, He's holding up the line trying to organizeway over left while Tino, Verrills and RCG are to the left of him and then realizes there was an offload and Burton cooks him.....

4th BK has the error 1st tackle on a hit up off our 20 and Curran gets carried over like he's at a funeral or something and laid down to score.....

Tino was also in the area where there was tries a couple of times but he was incredible of an ACL and it's on the others to be doing more and I trust him to be fine, It was more timing/flow with him and not being used to it. If AJ isn't dumb and puts it down not desperately who knows but every time we had decent field possession we gave it up.

We got in the grind after that and did OK even while still making errors in poor spots, Yes they capitalized which I'd hope we could hold out but that's how the NRL is now, Those mistakes/errors are cost us more then systems or anything else when everyone basically can attack well in the modern NRL.. There's barely any good defensive centres out there... 80% of fanbases don't like their centre pairings.

Which goes to Bret White, I'm neutral as anything on him or leaning to get rid off but for who and why? Like Birdman said, It's a personal problem isn't it? We've got Fermor and Dave in two of the most important positions for defending and neither of them are even average maybe. JC looks already like one of better defenders in reading and hitting and our centre/wingers have look more connected which is a big difference to last year.

What can Brett actually do with these guys who just make poor or lazy decisions??? That's got to be on Des to make the call or lower all their minutes and actually play the better defenders more? Our edges defended pretty well imo for what they could do, It was just really poor middle defence.

The issue to me is with Des not seeming to see all these players for what they are or thinking they'll come good after seeing them for a year. He kind of fixed the Dave issue but Moe is becoming a bigger one then he was.

Lofi still can't win a tackle (Most of those tb's came off the two tries I think)....... He's worth persisting cause he's a freak with the speed but he can't win a tackle coming out of our end but has gotten better, His errors end up as being more harmful to the team, I think he's been the highest error maker in the comp on average for a back every year and barely any of them are "good" errors, They are nearly always in our backfield off kicks or hit ups and it's brutal.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the video work Cow. I'd add on the 4th Dogs try that Klese moronically lifts and pulls Curran over the tryline.

I've been waiting for Des to make some tough selection calls but the only player who seems to not get a look in is Alick, who is a better defender than Moe, Beau, DF and Klese.

The Lofi issue for me is that we carry him for freakish speed only. I also see attitude issues with him jogging, when he should be sprinting in D. Kini is smaller and makes tougher carries and more metres with kick returns. If Lofi wants to play NRL, he should watch how Fox uses his speed as power on kick returns. He could do that but he needs to toughen up mentally.

I'll say this for our OBs though, it's really hard when your forwards are working hard enough inside out. It happens often and they have to learn to read it well and go hard. I can't see Lofi achieving this while BK is his decision-maker.
 
MaroonTitan said:
Thanks for the video work Cow. I'd add on the 4th Dogs try that Klese moronically lifts and pulls Curran over the tryline.

I've been waiting for Des to make some tough selection calls but the only player who seems to not get a look in is Alick, who is a better defender than Moe, Beau, DF and Klese.

The Lofi issue for me is that we carry him for freakish speed only. I also see attitude issues with him jogging, when he should be sprinting in D. Kini is smaller and makes tougher carries and more metres with kick returns. If Lofi wants to play NRL, he should watch how Fox uses his speed as power on kick returns. He could do that but he needs to toughen up mentally.

I'll say this for our OBs though, it's really hard when your forwards are working hard enough inside out. It happens often and they have to learn to read it well and go hard. I can't see Lofi achieving this while BK is his decision-maker.
Click to expand...

Alick is not a better defender than those guys IMO…his D is part of the reason he isn’t getting picked.

We’re lacking edge forwards who can effectively front load their defence. But edge forwards also get more exposed when your middle forwards are unable to slow momentum by losing the ruck consistently.
 
I’ve said it a million times we are just a dumb team. We rarely make the right decision, our errors nearly always result in points, the same players make the same coach killing plays and on top of that you can guarantee any 50/50 calls aren’t going our way. How do we fix it? Hell even if we could cut our bonehead decision making in half we would win more games than we lose.

Anyways it’s the first game, sky isn’t falling but fark I want to see some progression against the nights we can’t just bumble our way into every season would be nice to just ONCE start a season going “wow we look good this year”
 
Anybody wondering why with a so-called killer pack we ran the ball wide on the SECOND TACKLE OF THE SEASON!! Stupid is as stupid does.
 
I dare say des anticipated the ambush and instructed them to go around.

If Montoya is a metre or 2 further back we are around and most likely scoring

Can't fault them for being creative, plenty of other things like ball control to worry about imo. We hold the pill we go along way to winning that game
 
Does anyone know about the Jojo and Sami swap, is it something we should expect all year or a tactical move? I like Jojo as a centre eventually but he also offers so much in the air on the wing, and his runs and metres were pretty disappointing last night (only 9 runs for 95 metres and that try would’ve been 15-20 of them).

I’m not a big Sami fan but at least he had 20 runs, Kelly and AKP really need to step up in that area. Also I haven’t checked through the live comments from last night so sorry if it’s been touched on, but our wingers were terrible at being prepared for a 4th tackle kick last night, the amount of times they almost got a 40/20 or caught us out was tragic.
 
Upthetits said:
I dare say des anticipated the ambush and instructed them to go around.

If Montoya is a metre or 2 further back we are around and most likely scoring

Can't fault them for being creative, plenty of other things like ball control to worry about imo. We hold the pill we go along way to winning that game
Click to expand...
Sorry but we will have to agree to disagree. Imo, there is a time and a place for everything. Because Montoya wasn't that 2 yards further back Kini got smashed and we started the game on the backfoot from which we never recovered. I just hope they save that sort of stuff for a tiring defence, get the forwards to muscle-up and do their work like they practice rather than listen to what the talking heads are crapping-on about. We have won nothing until we do.
 
Last edited:
Titanic said:
Anybody wondering why with a so-called killer pack we ran the ball wide on the SECOND TACKLE OF THE SEASON!! Stupid is as stupid does.
Click to expand...
The shock tactic to catch out them out.
Problem was, Ciraldo knew it was coming and they squashed it.

If it works we’re down the other end and over the line, 6 points up in the first minute.
If it doesn’t, we’re stuck in our end and immediately under pressure.
Case in point, charge down > try.
6 points down in the second minute.

High risk, high reward.

We need to use it wisely.
It is going to work but for now let’s just keep it up the guts boys.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom