Longing for the day ...

Damn straight, Gus

Interesting comment from Phil "Gus" Gould in today's prescription for the Tigers winning their NRL semi-final against the Dragons:

"Winning is 90 per cent mental."

Of course, that was exactly the Broncos problem towards the end of their season - the youngsters (as Roy Masters points out) did not support the big guys when they made breaks.

Sean Berrigan is a classic case in point: scored 19 tries in as many games to lead the competition, but didn't score any at the end, when the Broncos started to lose. Berrigan is not a line breaker, he scores from speed and support play. What happened to him was symptomatic of the whole team (Shane Webke and Darren Lockyer mostly excepted: they stopped putting in the effort *away* from the ball.

They stopped committing themselves to teh positions where they could score. Many lose balls were dived on by an opponent who just plain wanted it more; the support players didn't come through in a second phase to finish off the breaks Lockyer and Webke, etc, created. They stopped putting pressure on opposing kickers in general play.

Still, it's easy for me to say from here - my touch team forfeited their semi-final because we could only get 4 players to it! Now that's a lack of commitment ...