General thoughts
I thought it was a game of missed chances. We created a load of ruck speed in the first half, unrewarded a lot of it with a failure to find a right play on the end of the ruck speed. Second half we created a lot of opportunities and didn't execute. But I thought we won the physical battle, we created more chances but the nature of sport is you have to execute on the back of it.
Missed chances
They were the critical moments, there were a couple of poor defensive moments in the game which we were punished for again. But overall our defence looked largely in control, we won a lot more physical collisions tonight, a lot more than the opposition I'd suggest, but some of the things you win you don't get rewarded for as well. But that's out of your control.
Satisfied with the improvements?
Last week is irrelevant, tonight there was a lot of intent, there was a lot effort put in. We put ourselves in a position to win the game which is pleasing but we didn't get on with it so everyone is very disappointed.
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Nene Macdonald's debut
He had some tremendous carries, he was a handful and it was a steady way to start I thought.
Morgan Gannon
He failed his HIA so we'll go through the processes there, but he's fine, he's in good health and there are no dramas there.
Should they have had more 'six agains'?
What do you think? There's no consistency. I watched last night's match, there are a lot of flops and efforts where ruck speed isn't been rewarded. If that's how they're going to adjudicate it, we'll have to find another way.
Cameron Smith in the back-row
Cam did well, he's a footy player who can do well wherever he's required. It's disappointing to lose Ganno but the team covered his absence reasonably well I thought.
Ash Handley at centre
Overall I thought he had a good game.
The goal-line defence issue
It takes some time to get your goal-line defence really smooth, maybe that's not the right word but to execute and find a way to keep it off the ground. Ultimately whichever team scrambles the best has the best goal-line defence regardless of system and effort because as much as you train competitively you don't do full contact, full combat with two points on the line in training. It takes some time to get that up to speed, I've watched a bunch of the NRL trials and some of the best teams have equally been a little bit of. It's difficult at the start of the year to have all systems going on in every aspect. Last week we found a bit of grit in the second half, this time we found some ruck speed and physical dominance but didn't have the execution.
Taking out the results, are you content with performance levels for round two?
No. I thought our execution, if it's somewhat better the result goes the other way and if it's a lot better I think the result is certainly not in question. I've no idea where we were going to be in round two, I'm not sure any coach could other than working hard and being in the scrap, getting a few results early on.
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