Game 2: Toronto Home

I don’t agree agree that Toronto were the better team. They played well and off loaded really well and some of the attacking shapes were excellent. Wilkin ran them well. He’s a gobby so and so but he can play and whilst their last try wasn’t great from our POV it was a quality pass from Wilkin that put him through the big hole in our defence. I thought SBW was good. His off loads were mostly good and his passing excellent. He’s struggling with the increased running in league but that’s to be expected. They move you around a lot with the way they move the ball. Add GoB into that team with Wilkin, SBW and the half backs and you have 5 pivots. They will struggle to win many as their pack isn’t dominant enough but they showed glimpses last week and more today that they will test defences.

As for Pauli... I think I’m right in saying Toronto didn’t score when him and Ikahihifo were on the pitch and don’t think it is coincidence. His defence is sound. Two or three times he saved Brown’s ass after the half back charged out of the line and missed a tackle, one time he threw the Toronto player around like a rag doll. He’s not a 20 hit up a game kind of player and I can see why people say he’s a luxury player but he said energy and sucks players in to stop him either creating gaps for others or meaning they have to work harder to get back into position. And I don’t think we’re using him very well yet. It’s a shame he didn’t score, it wasn’t a great pass but looked like he should have taken it. Too often the pass to him is delayed meaning he has to stop to get the ball taking away his momentum. And we didn’t camp on their line as much as we should have done. We kept dropping the ball or kicking it dead giving them an out but if we can start getting repeat sets and time our passes to him better he’ll get plenty of tries

Finally just to make myself really unpopular. I though Child had a good game. He was getting loads of grief from fans around me but I didn’t think he did much wrong

We’ll get a real sense of the players as the season goes on. Pauli included. Yates was blowing more than I’d have expected him to when he came off. He works hard but I expected him to be able to do 80 minutes for us. To be fair I’m not absolutely sure about the team selection again today and wasn’t paying attention to which forwards were in the front and back rows apart from the starting 5.

I thought Conor Jones did ok as well. We sharpened up when Lussick came on but Jones was solid

I think the decision to stop Sio was a tough one. With no video ref I think a ref has to blow straight away if there’s an obstruction that close to the line. The fact that the call lands in Sios hands as he blows is a killer. He could have waited a few seconds but the ref can’t know it’s going to be intercepted on the next pass. He did apologise. I thought the one near the end when someone challenged for the ball in the air and Child gave s as penalty for an elbow or a shove was harsh but I think it would have been a knock against us anyway I reckon

TBH  I also think Child’s had a half decent game - someone up high must have had a word in his ear re letting the game flow - must have been 20 mins before the first penalty! 
After a beer I’ve just watched the highlights and we played some great footy at times - Evalds and Brown both looked sharp in patches . And reaffirmed that Sarge played really !!!
With good coaching and the right attitude ( plus time and patience) we could come good....
right off for more beer

Well done the lads, they all put in a good shift on a crap day, once we properly click then teams will fear us.

We needed a win, we got one, we need to improve , we can improve.
With regards SBW I thought that his initial 15 minutes or so was not too good, by his own standards but I thought that his second spell was excellent and as Dixon 13 has stated Toronto have got a world class player.
The atmosphere in the West Stand where we were was very good with quite a lot of new faces , some there for the first time with their season tickets.

There are a few on the Total forums and a few on Twitter - they seem pretty enthusiastic but from what I can gather they didn’t expect a lot of early wins. I think they are banking on home form. They seem to feel a bit hard done to as well which I could understand if they’d admit that their own club had also made a lot of mistakes which they don’t. That’s my take on it anyway. They do seem very interested and positive regardless.