Winslade's Offload wrote:
The quick loss of 3 early tries was really poor with Vaughan of all people responsible for much of the self inflicted damage. However perhaps I am in a small minority in thinking this is a much better side than we have had for a couple of years ? The side never gave up, and the level of effort was very high. The one worrying area is defence with lots of very poor mistakes. In contrast our attack is improving quickly; we don't look like headless chickens anymore when we get close to the opposition line. We are certainly short of some weight and quality in the pack, but Burgess will already know this and will be waiting for an opportunity to bring someone in.
On this showing Im encouraged with what Burgess has managed to achieve but it's still very much a work in progress. We have one specialist attack coach but I think I would bring in someone to sort out the defence. Catalan looked much better organised than us in this respect.
My thoughts exactly. We look like a side that will eventually be competitive in all games, and we didn't panic despite being poor in the opening 10 minutes and stuck to the processes. We seem like a side who can slot people in and out without it disrupting us too much.
We definitely look underweight and need more go-forward, as we got steamrollered all match. We need to sort that defence out too. My only criticism of Burgess is that he dropped Wrench too soon, as Tai looked like a schoolboy trying to tackle in the first half. I think Wrench would be far more creative too with better hands, at this stage of the season anyway.