Anyone for a 1 match barometer reading ?
What a pile of Shoite that was

We have a head coach who says that he Hopes for a better season !

It’s the fans that Hope not
The Coach

The coach should expect and literally demand success - at the minimum

Uncle Tony is just that - too nice and he’s become the Buddy instead of the
Boss that many need

A motivational boss !

Oh well - long season where we fail to deliver apart from occasional wins meaning AP won’t make any coaching changes

Think our pack could actually be ok, if (big if) we can sort out the discipline. Thought yellow card aside Ese Ese was good (can't see his stats on the SL site), Sao offloaded loads and Ashworth was decent. Ock was hit and miss did some good things, but also bad moments. Can't judge him on one game.

Our real issue in our backs and halfbacks, backs aren't big or strong enough, dominated nearly every tackle, although thought Martin did well. But having 3 out of 4 starting backs doesn't help. Walker is like Briscoe, all heart, but not sure he has the creative skills to be a top fullback.

Halfbacks are a real issue, desperately need Trueman back, can't fully judge Brown on that game, but I'd be looking to play him 9.

IMO our best pivots would be

1 Hoy
6 Trueman
7 Smith
9/13 Brown/Houghton

Let's be honest with our best side we are at best in about 8th place, a few injuries like we have already 10th/11th.

Not 100% convinced by Smith, but can't see anyone better, he has to improve us this year and get recruitment right.

Could really do with Pearson finding some money from somewhere to bring in 3 quality overseas players and a couple of domestic ones.

Utter shambles, it was as bad as I feared. Just thankful that Hiku missed four kicks and Rovers were not brilliant.

Nu Brown largely anonymous, no ideas going forward, discipline awful, Pele looks a hothead and players going down like ninepins.

I can see Pele picking up 3-4 games, EseEse one match and SAo given his record may cop a ban too.

No positives at all last night. It looks like it's going to be a long old season.

Looks like we’ve signed three Lauakis and a Sam Obst as it stands. Long season ahead.

The performance did have a very strong 'Agar era' vibe.

Just a shame we don't have a Willie Manu to throw it too

I know it's the way he likes his team to play, but I think the team really didn't look comfortable playing Tonyball, we shouldn't be trying to throw it round at every opportunity when we don't deserve to...the players confidence was shot last night and they looked nervous chucking it round on the 1st/2nd tackles so much and it led to mistakes which then put more pressure back on us. We should have gone back to basics when it was obvious plan A wasn't working, radders style 5 drives and clear the lines to calm us down and keep rovers off our line. Can't remember a game where we've put so little pressure on a teams line. Any sort of good position we had was spoilt with a knock on on play 1 or 2...don't think we kicked into their in goal until Cam Smiths kick through in about the 74th minute

Another issue was the lack of a real leader out there last night, someone to calm the team down, refocus them, adapt to the sending offs, this was a big flaw in Smiths recruiting in the off season...nobody in that squad is true captain material

Haha yes the only item in the playbook - the Manu Miracle

Well the “doom and gloomers” amongst us weren’t wrong. Absolutely nowhere near good enough. I honestly don’t see where our wins are coming from.

This proves Pearson is picking the players to sign. Smith would never go for the dross on show last night but as is rumoured Smith on huge money and wants one last payday. You can tell he doesn’t care, he is a dinosaur and all this loving stuff and players best mates don’t work, it didn’t at Rovers. Pearson storming out at the end was a bit hilarious though.