Manly loss - the correction we had to have?

So after a great run of 4 wins (vs Gold Coast, Melbourne, St George & the Broncos) the wheels came off last night against Manly. The Cowboys were flogged 38-6 at home. And it was ugly as sin: we only completed at 58% (and a rather pathetic 42% in the first half) and lost the contact battle. That's a guatanteed losing combination that - poor ball control and a loss of control of ruck speed.

There weren't a lot of strong perforamnces out there. One of the worst came from Chester, who racked up 6 handling errors. It wasn't just down to Tom though - I don't think anyone covered themselves in glory.

We seemed to really stray away from what has been the core of our recent success - good ball control, kicking to corners, defending hard.

In that sense maybe this was a loss we needed to have. So it's crystal clear that we need to stick to our game plan - run hard, tackle hard, ensure we don't give away set restarts & yardage penalties, control the ball and kick to corners. There's always a temptation to skip the hard stuff and go wide early, but last night proved the folly of such an approach.

And it's also good to remind ourselves a few things:

(1) Improvement isn't always neat and linear. In fact quite the contrary

And if you want the football version of this, look at the Bulldogs. They've had Phil Gould, Cameron Ciraldo, a massive war chest, and have brought in Crighton, Kikau & Galvin. And they are still yet to win a finals game since 2015 and have made a patchy start to season 2026. 

Another club that's proving improvement is neither neat or linear - Parramatta. Late last year theey seemed to be heading somewhere. Last week the Goal Coast put 50 on them. At home. 

So as much as last night was disappointing, it's not realistic to expect us to flatten all comers, and it's quite certain there will be speed bumps on the way. Consider last night a speed bump. 

(2) Our team is still very green. Chester hasn't played 20 NRL games yet (18 to be precise). Laybutt only a handful more (21). Purdue (38), Luke (30), O'Donnell (27). Even Luki only has some 64 NRL games under his belt. These guys are still learning their craft.

(3) We're not the only team that's striving to improve out there. And Manly are on their own hot streak after the Seibold sacking. 

So let's not punch the panic button after one bad game. Keep the team settled. We're in a significantly better position that we were after Round 2, and hopefully we've learnt some valuable lessons this weekend.