Disappointing loss to Parramatta. For mine we seemed to have their measure the whole game, but couldn't quite put them away. And that came back to burn us at the end.
Obviously losing TommyD sucks, and it almost certainly cost us the game. That said, even with Tommy out there on one leg, there were though still a few opportunities to ice the game, and we fumbled our lines.
I was then rather surpised to see the reactions on Twitter and facebook. Plenty of ranting about Payten and Drinkwater. Yet Mikaele, who dropped the ball with 40 seconds left in great field goal position, and could have killed the contest by dropping on a loose ball with 5 minutes left (Parramatta scored the next play), was immune to criticism.
Laybutt also had a poor night with his hands, coming up with 3 handling errors, and was central to our pissing away of our ref challenge (which might have been very useful) - again, not much criticism on line.
If we were going to single one person out, it should have been Laybutt or Mikaele (IMO).
Meanwhile Drinkwater ran for 213m on Friday, had a tackle efficiency of 90%, produced 2 line break assists (and what should have been another try assist butchered by Laybutt in the first half). He played a strong game. He certainly didn't cost us the win.
And I'm sure Todd didn't tell the team at half time to rack up a bunch of handling errors and give Parramatta a heap of chances. To be fair, he might have pulled Dearden straight away after the injury, but Dearden said he thought he could run it off, and the trainer (who I'm guessing wasn't some drunken rando they plucked out of the crowd 5 minutes before kickoff) also felt he'd be right: 20-20 vision in hindsight. And the interchange was already under heavy pressure given Soni Luke only lasted 30 seconds.
It again for me brought up the idea that some players/people are very much sacred cows who never get criticised for any errors or mistakes (in this case Mikaele & Laybutt), while some are whipping boys who get the blame for everything (Drinkwater, Payten, and before that it was Chad and Peter Hiku)
I'm not 100% sure what's happening here, but I think it's something to do with Collective Behavior and the psychology of getting the likes and positive feedback from others. It's a bit Lord of the Flies in that respect.
One thing I have noticed though. It's never the local who becomes the whipping boy - Hiku, Payten, Chad, Drinkwater - none of them North Queenslanders.
I don't know what it all means. Interesting tho.
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