NRL Round 26 2016 - Melbourne Storm v Cronulla Sutherland Sharks @ AAMI Park, Saturday 3 September 7:30pm

BurgoShark · Sep 3, 2016

Sutty said:
The problem was the Storm being allowed to lay all over the tackle. Every tackle. 3 seconds laying on top without getting penalised, allowing the Storm players to get off the tackle one at a time. Limp dick referee. If they are too scared to blow a penalty in the finals, Storm will win comp hands down. Absolutely stifles attacks.

Our handling has gone to ****, Bird was terrible again.

Yep on both counts.

It's a bit hard to start criticising the guys like Ennis and Maloney for when they were playing hot potato in the last 20 minutes. The game was lost in the first 60.

CrazyMatt · Sep 3, 2016

burgess1978 said:
Yep on both counts.

It's a bit hard to start criticising the guys like Ennis and Maloney for when they were playing hot potato in the last 20 minutes. The game was lost in the first 60.

Game was lost 90 seconds into the 2nd half, once they got that try it was over.

sharksandwich · Sep 3, 2016

I think we had more than enough chances. We did play well and had solid defense for a lot of the game with only one soft try in the grind and one very late when the heads were down. Two of their tries were highly doubtful but all in all I think the occasion rattled us (you have to remember it was IN Melbourne) and we made too many mistakes in crucial times.

Oh well. We will win against Ricky's team next week and hopefully learned a few good things from tonight. Heads up.

HaroldBishop · Sep 3, 2016

Yep we created quite a few chances just lacked polish. We'll beat Canberra next week.

Sutty · Sep 3, 2016

Was the Canberra game where we had the 5 day turnaround before?

Sharkyle · Sep 3, 2016

Gutted. I was really excited for tonight but that was awful... Cant see us beating the raiders in canberra they'll be fired up if they get their home semi.

CrankyShark · Sep 3, 2016

I really thought we would do a lot better than that. The Storm defence is absolutely suffocating though.

A clean break by Jimbo amounting to nothing, and the butchered try from the Barba run really hurt as well. They tried hard and not much went our way early. several head knocks followed by a knee injury didn't help. I'm surprised Feki got back out there, I thought he was in la la land.

BurgoShark · Sep 3, 2016

Sutty said:
Was the Canberra game where we had the 5 day turnaround before?

Yep.

Just to add to the doom and gloom. A loss next week guarantees that we would need to play in either Townsville or Melbourne in the prelim.

sharks2010 · Sep 3, 2016

Just shows how far away we have become to the top teams

CHOGM · Sep 3, 2016

Sutty said:
The problem was the Storm being allowed to lay all over the tackle. Every tackle. 3 seconds laying on top without getting penalised, allowing the Storm players to get off the tackle one at a time. Limp dick referee. If they are too scared to blow a penalty in the finals, Storm will win comp hands down. Absolutely stifles attacks.

Our handling has gone to ****, Bird was terrible again.

Yep this is at the heart of their success. Without it they come back to the field big time in my opinion. They put players on their back or side, then get up one by one often with knees and legs wrapped up in the tackled player so the whole thing looks like they're releasing when in fact the tackled player can't move.

After the call of held their should be a fixed time limit playing in the refs head and if you are not free of the tackled player by then you're done no argument. The onus should be on the defender every time.

hitman124 · Sep 3, 2016

As soon as we muffed the try at the end of the first half, I knew we weren't much of a chance.

Feel for the the elderly gentleman who took a tumble in front of me in the opening kick off, medics were called and everything. He seemed to be ok.

CHOGM · Sep 3, 2016

sharksandwich said:
I think we had more than enough chances. We did play well and had solid defense for a lot of the game with only one soft try in the grind and one very late when the heads were down. Two of their tries were highly doubtful but all in all I think the occasion rattled us (you have to remember it was IN Melbourne) and we made too many mistakes in crucial times.

Oh well. We will win against Ricky's team next week and hopefully learned a few good things from tonight. Heads up.

That's s good assessment IMO. Just hope we don't lose Ennis.

CHOGM · Sep 3, 2016

I'm off to Leichhardt tomorrow with a Tigers fan mate of mine. I will be a serious Tigers fan tomorrow.

evertonshark · Sep 3, 2016

CHOGM said:
Yep this is at the heart of their success. Without it they come back to the field big time in my opinion. They put players on their back or side, then get up one by one often with knees and legs wrapped up in the tackled player so the whole thing looks like they're releasing when in fact the tackled player can't move.

After the call of held their should be a fixed time limit playing in the refs head and if you are not free of the tackled player by then you're done no argument. The onus should be on the defender every time.

This has been going on for years with no attempt to stop it by the nrl, we should be doing the same thing otherwise we just get beaten.

Sir Chadley · Sep 3, 2016

I'm trying to figure out if it was a case of Melbourne playing well or us playing ****. Probably a combination of that.

Thought we went toe to toe with them in that first period until their first try. Was the pass forward. It looked like it but they never call them these days so not surprised it was let go. Still should have tackled Blair. How he got two tries is beyond me.

We still toughed it out well after that and if we just could have got that try Bird bombed or the one Maloney threw to Marika we were back in it at 10-8.

Don't know where we go from here, I know we can play much better whereas the Storm were at their absolute peak.

CrankyShark · Sep 3, 2016

Ennis dished up some terrible kicking in the second half as well. We were just handing over possession.

Benny Barba did well in a team well beaten I though.

Sir Chadley · Sep 3, 2016

evertonshark said:
This has been going on for years with no attempt to stop it by the nrl, we should be doing the same thing otherwise we just get beaten.

Problem is when we or other teams do it the penalty is blown. Maloney had one go against him tonight where he was totally caught up for all to see except the guys with the whistles.

BurgoShark · Sep 3, 2016

evertonshark said:
This has been going on for years with no attempt to stop it by the nrl, we should be doing the same thing otherwise we just get beaten.

Oh - we'd get 30 penalties a game against us. Look at those two ridiculous ones on Maloney tonight. On one of them he was lying on the ground next to the player an the guy landed on him FFS. On the other the Melbourne player gets half way up and then drops both his knees into Maloney's midriff (not in a dangerous way). Melbourne has a reputation of being a tough team in the middle, and that reputation lets them get away with so much. Teams who aren't Melbourne - don't.

Deleted member 3365 · Sep 3, 2016

We are soft as ****.

evertonshark · Sep 3, 2016

Chad said:
Problem is when we or other teams do it the penalty is blown. Maloney had one go against him tonight where he was totally caught up for all to see except the guys with the whistles.

That's because melbourne have perfected it, when we try and slow the play the ball down its just 1 player lying there that makes it look obvious. I hate the way melbourne do it but until it's stamped out (yeah right) just copy them.

NRL Round 26 2016 - Melbourne Storm v Cronulla Sutherland Sharks @ AAMI Park, Saturday 3 September 7:30pm

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