It’s great to go into tomorrow’s clash with Sunshine Coast Falcons with five straight wins behind us but we know we haven’t been hitting a lot of the standards we’ve set for each other in the past few weeks and have to improve if we want the run to continue.
We’ll be without Konrad Hurrell too, and his yardage with the ball and talk on the field and in the sheds will be missed.
But we have good back-up with Brendan Elliot switching back to the centres and Shaun Carney coming back into the side at fullback.
Getting back to playing with patience and controlling the ball better is top of the list of where we need to get better. We went away from that in the second half against Northern Pride last Saturday.
In the first half we had seven sets at their line and converted six of them into a try or repeat set. In the second half we achieved that only once.
We have to cut out errors in the play ball too. There were too many sloppy ones, so we have to be a bit cleaner in what we are doing there.
If we tidy those little things up and be patient, and back ourselves to score if we keep our discipline and don’t get too anxious at times, we have shown what we can do.
While the team is enjoying the ride of winning games no one is getting carried away.
We’re still only eighth on the ladder and the playing group is aware we are not hitting a lot of standards we set for each prior to games and even though we’re winning. We had a lot of missed tackles, and allowed a lot of offloads against the Pride and completion rate was at 68 per cent.
There have been plenty of positives from the past few weeks of course. The confidence in the side is high and so is the belief we can win even if we’re not hitting our targets in our processes.
The switch of Eli Levido to starting hooker worked well and Sam Meskell did a great job when he came off the bench too, looking for then opportunity to run.
Lindon McGrady and Kane Elgey balancing each other well in the halves, Brayden McGrady is up to 12 tries now, Kiah Cooper has been real consistent on the right wing and the pack is doing a solid job with Cheyne Whitelaw leading the way.
It was good to have Tristan Lumley back last week and he’ll improve from having that game under his belt.
The strength of the Falcons depends on how many players from Melbourne Storm they get back but there are some good young players amongst them like centre Justin Olam, halfback Cooper Johns, hooker Harry Grant and prop Tui Kamikamica.
But we know they’ll be tough. They beat the Capras well a couple of weeks back before going down to Redcliffe.
I hope we get a few people come down and support us with the Titans away this weekend and the Bears playing on Saturday.
The boys appreciate the support and we’re trying to make Piggabeen a hard place for visiting teams to win, with a vocal crowd always behind the Seagulls.
Related Posts
