The pass was forward, no doubt about that.
The Manly Sea Eagles are filthy about that pass. They have ever right to be as well. It was a mile forward and neither one of the referee’s or touch judges noticed it.
Hold on, how did we get here?
Go back to last Monday night, and after a slow start the Sea Eagles are completely dominating the West Tigers. Their forward pack was dominating, their backs had plenty of space to work with, they were a machine that could no be stopped.
In the second half they opened the scoring, they were all set, and yet in the last 20 minutes they got ambushed and beaten by a West Tigers side who did something similar late last year to them.
A few injuries and suspensions later and they turned up at Parramatta as underdogs.
Manly once again dominated. In fact I txt messaged my Twitter saying that if Manly had a bit more polish to their attack, they would be one of the top sides in the competition.
When their forwards are on a roll they are unstoppable. Foran is really finding his feet in first grade and Lyon is playing great with the added responsibility as captain.
One thing I Twittered not long after that was that, if Parramatta can get their smaller players to attack that big Manly forward pack, they would be right back in the contest. Oh how right I was.
Another big lead was looking shakey and then it happened. A 107 meter try scoring play that started with Jarryd Hayne taking a pass two meters our from his own dead ball line and ended up with Timana Tahu scoring under the posts at the other end.
It was an amazing effort, and another terrible, crippling loss to the Sea Eagles.
Yeah, there was a forward pass in the Eels comeback, but the talk about the pass has glossed over the bigger issue.
In back to back weeks now the Sea Eagles have allowed two opponents to come back from around about a 20 point deficit. Two very different teams that used different ways to make their comeback.
In a competition that has already punished teams that have shut up shop and tried to defend a lead, the Sea Eagles look like a gunslinger thats brought a starters gun to a fight while their opponent is backing a mini-gun.
They have a great pack, but Balin has been very poor so far this season from dummy half, they won’t have Stewart for basically the rest of the year, they need more attacking spark to be able to put teams away in the competition because there is not a forward pack out there that can dominate the game for 80 minutes….there is just too much talent in the NRL to do that any more.
So yeah, the Sea Eagles have every right to be filthy, but you have to wonder if that is anger, or frustration about their own performance.
