Someone explain to me....

[King Salvo]

I feel like the Roosters play more conservative then the Tigers.
Our forwards hit the ball up one out and never look to offload, the Tigers are always looking for offloads.
The Tigers have nothing to lose but we don't have anything to lose either because the worst that can happen is we drop the ball which we already do now anyhow.

But Yes I agree the Tigers will fall away later in the season because basically they are all reserve graders playing at a level they can't maintain for 26 rounds.

Tigers and Warriors showed how to beat the Chooks - up in your face defence and wait for the implode- (penalties and errors)- offloads are killing them too in defence as not able to regroup and show resilience in defence- Forwards need to have ball skills which sadly the Chooks one's don't have- easy for the defence to combat the one out hit ups as virtually no offloads occur either nor much in the way of support play. Sharks will kill them this Friday unless the many flaws in players and the team are addressed.

[roosterchook]

Old habits die hard so that explains why we will go ok for a short while after a loss then revert back to our old ways. This year no goal kicker and more rookies make it worse. As well we can’t defend offloads. Expect every team to offload plenty. I think Robindon lost the plot long ago. We’’re seeing no improvement to long term problems at all.

[Mickie Lane]

I feel like the Roosters play more conservative then the Tigers.
Our forwards hit the ball up one out and never look to offload, the Tigers are always looking for offloads.
The Tigers have nothing to lose but we don't have anything to lose either because the worst that can happen is we drop the ball which we already do now anyhow.

But Yes I agree the Tigers will fall away later in the season because basically they are all reserve graders playing at a level they can't maintain for 26 rounds.

Matalino, Packer, Lawrence, Taylor, Brooks, Benji, Rochow, Sue, Naiqama, Reynolds, Thompson, Lolohea.
I would take any of their suppose reserve graders.

[Adam Stone]

Matalino, Packer, Lawrence, Taylor, Brooks, Benji, Rochow, Sue, Naiqama, Reynolds, Thompson, Lolohea.
I would take any of their suppose reserve graders.

Jessie Sue hasn't played first grade all year and he is a forward and we need forwards. Nofoaluma is stuck in reserve grade and he is a winger and we need a winger. Hello?

[Random Rooster]

Matalino, Packer, Lawrence, Taylor, Brooks, Benji, Rochow, Sue, Naiqama, Reynolds, Thompson, Lolohea.
I would take any of their suppose reserve graders.

Dont get too excited.....the Knights were the only undefeated team after 4 rounds in 2015 and ended up getting the spoon.

All i want is the Roosters to hold the ball and complete sets.How hard can that be???

[Bondicigar]

We need Ivan Cleary to come over and say " hey guys hold the ball"?? This is a guy who had a great roster at Penrith for 3 years and only managed a 47% win record before being punted

Yeah i dont get all this cleary super coach shyte just because the tiger are off to a good start.
Lests see where they are in round 20.
they wont make the 8 and we will be in the top 4.
see then if we still want cleary as coach

[ism22]

Tigers and Warriors showed how to beat the Chooks - up in your face defence and wait for the implode- (penalties and errors)- offloads are killing them too in defence as not able to regroup and show resilience in defence- Forwards need to have ball skills which sadly the Chooks one's don't have- easy for the defence to combat the one out hit ups as virtually no offloads occur either nor much in the way of support play. Sharks will kill them this Friday unless the many flaws in players and the team are addressed.

IMO the biggest issue for completions is that we s*ck at playing grinding footy and catch-up footy. Against the warriors:
- Aside from that 5 minute period in the first half where the Warriors got slammed, we lost the penalty count. Like it or not, grinding teams are good at making it look like they were penalised and this smashes our completion rate.
- We get way too desperate when we are behind and way too many unforced errors kick in. Stupid stuff like trying to be too be too tricky with a simple pass (on the first or second tackle), not catching a ball thrown to you when you have a massive overlap and a certain captain of ours crabbing across the field looking for a freak try rather than taking the tackle and leaving the playmaking to Cronk, Keary (and Tedesco - who needs more input IMO, right now he is just being used as a spare winger with a decent step).
- Latrell is much improved but we lack a sharp shooter who can convert 80-90% of the time!!!! Being down 6-4 and then 8-4 due to an easily milked penalty (for example - seems to happen a lot) suddenly puts us a try behind. In aggregate our lack of a sharp shooter really builds up the pressure because we are giving away like 8-10 free points a game.
- All of the a obove amount to us doing too much unnecessary work!!! Quite regularly we can win despite this due to our raw talent. However, IMO if we were smarter then we wouldnt have so many games where we end up losing by cricket scores because of fatigue and desperation (rather than being outclassed by a slick outfit). I dont mean to disrespect but on paper, we were backed to beat the Warriors. It is our stupidity, not their surplus of talent and prodigal tactics that killed us.

—-

Solution? I think we need to score points... EARLY. We need to use Teddy, Latrell, Cronk, Fergo and Keary to razzle dazzle the opposition and score 2 or 3 tries early on. This will prevent them from just grinding us into submission by flopping ~4-5 players into each tackle and intentionally running down the clock.

Unfortunately this is not always possible and sometimes we will be playing catch-up footy. The Sharks will be tough because they are really good at getting ahead by a bit then running down the clock. They are gonna wrestle the fark our of us... you will see Fifita, Graham, Lewis and Gallen in EVERY tackle, lying all over us and trying to strip the ball without the ref noticing. Segeyaro will be niggling the whole time going OOOOOOH PENALTY!!!! REF!!!! HE TOUCHED MY CHIN!!! HE PUSHED ME!!! HE HELD ME TOO LONG!!!! OFFSIDE REF!!! They can and will get away with this. Guys like Duges, Holmes, Moylan, Leutele and Ramien will be asking all sorts of questions on the back of piggyback penalties. It will be tough trying to win a grinding game of catch-up footy against them.

If we are behind early on then I dunno what we can do. Unfortunately I think our strength is also our weakness. We have a LOT of fast, clever, open-field players and zero nigglers. At best, we play the single brand of footy that I turn up to see.

IMO it is up to Robbo to simplify our gameplan when there is a lot of grinding/niggling. We need some low-risk set plays to use so that we can just calm the fark down, make sure we are not penalised and ignore the niggle. I dunno how you build pressure on top of that though... because when your focus is on minimising fake penalties, you are giving up free metres every time (which in turn builds pressure against you and tires you out).

I have no solution. There are positive, open-field, running teams and then there are grinding/niggling teams. This will always be the case and if we are gonna continue to focus on speed/running (rather than niggling) then I think we need to be smarter about it to ensure we are not trying to beat teams with our ball speed/running in the last 15 minutes of a game when we are absolutely buggered, unable to run and unable to make good, quick decisions on the fly. Hint: it almost never ends well for us.

[Mickie Lane]

IMO the biggest issue for completions is that we s*ck at playing grinding footy and catch-up footy. Against the warriors:
- Aside from that 5 minute period in the first half where the Warriors got slammed, we lost the penalty count. Like it or not, grinding teams are good at making it look like they were penalised and this smashes our completion rate.
- We get way too desperate when we are behind and way too many unforced errors kick in. Stupid stuff like trying to be too be too tricky with a simple pass (on the first or second tackle), not catching a ball thrown to you when you have a massive overlap and a certain captain of ours crabbing across the field looking for a freak try rather than taking the tackle and leaving the playmaking to Cronk, Keary (and Tedesco - who needs more input IMO, right now he is just being used as a spare winger with a decent step).
- Latrell is much improved but we lack a sharp shooter who can convert 80-90% of the time!!!! Being down 6-4 and then 8-4 due to an easily milked penalty (for example - seems to happen a lot) suddenly puts us a try behind. In aggregate our lack of a sharp shooter really builds up the pressure because we are giving away like 8-10 free points a game.
- All of the a obove amount to us doing too much unnecessary work!!! Quite regularly we can win despite this due to our raw talent. However, IMO if we were smarter then we wouldnt have so many games where we end up losing by cricket scores because of fatigue and desperation (rather than being outclassed by a slick outfit). I dont mean to disrespect but on paper, we were backed to beat the Warriors. It is our stupidity, not their surplus of talent and prodigal tactics that killed us.

—-

Solution? I think we need to score points... EARLY. We need to use Teddy, Latrell, Cronk, Fergo and Keary to razzle dazzle the opposition and score 2 or 3 tries early on. This will prevent them from just grinding us into submission by flopping ~4-5 players into each tackle and intentionally running down the clock.

Unfortunately this is not always possible and sometimes we will be playing catch-up footy. The Sharks will be tough because they are really good at getting ahead by a bit then running down the clock. They are gonna wrestle the fark our of us... you will see Fifita, Graham, Lewis and Gallen in EVERY tackle, lying all over us and trying to strip the ball without the ref noticing. Segeyaro will be niggling the whole time going OOOOOOH PENALTY!!!! REF!!!! HE TOUCHED MY CHIN!!! HE PUSHED ME!!! HE HELD ME TOO LONG!!!! OFFSIDE REF!!! They can and will get away with this. Guys like Duges, Holmes, Moylan, Leutele and Ramien will be asking all sorts of questions on the back of piggyback penalties. It will be tough trying to win a grinding game of catch-up footy against them.

If we are behind early on then I dunno what we can do. Unfortunately I think our strength is also our weakness. We have a LOT of fast, clever, open-field players and zero nigglers. At best, we play the single brand of footy that I turn up to see.

IMO it is up to Robbo to simplify our gameplan when there is a lot of grinding/niggling. We need some low-risk set plays to use so that we can just calm the fark down, make sure we are not penalised and ignore the niggle. I dunno how you build pressure on top of that though... because when your focus is on minimising fake penalties, you are giving up free metres every time (which in turn builds pressure against you and tires you out).

I have no solution. There are positive, open-field, running teams and then there are grinding/niggling teams. This will always be the case and if we are gonna continue to focus on speed/running (rather than niggling) then I think we need to be smarter about it to ensure we are not trying to beat teams with our ball speed/running in the last 15 minutes of a game when we are absolutely buggered, unable to run and unable to make good, quick decisions on the fly. Hint: it almost never ends well for us.

Up up Cronulla.