NRL Thoughts

Well, this wasn't a good week for Saints fans, it's one thing getting thumped by the defending premiers and competition leaders in consecutive games, it's another conceding 36 unanswered points to the reigning wooden spooners! A title we may well be putting in an application for if this form continues.

I thought Benji Marshall did OK for his first week, his involvement was good and he made some solid moves in defence, if his effort and commitment are there, I think he'll find some form. But it's very hard to win games when the ball control is so weak. Even harder when defence is non-existent. One wonders how long Steve Price has with this sort of form.

And gee, well, Canberra finally manage to at least get close to their opponents whilst still managing to add another loss to their cupboard full of them so naturally Ricky Stuart goes off on a tear and blames the referee. Yes, Mr Stuart, I'm sure that Canberra's Dragon like defence and dreadful completion rates are all the fault of the referee. How can you expect your players to take responsibility for their mistakes or to think that they have control over their results when you so consistently allow them to lay the blame somewhere else?!

I seem to recall that St George Illawarra suffered a close loss to Melbourne the other week  partly due to some questionable refereeing at the end and my response was to point out that we'd led by 14 points with 14 minutes to go so we might want to look in the mirror before we started blaming anyone else for our problems!