While watching the second quarter in the wet, I couldn't believe how much we continued to over possess, handball sideways and backwards and not try to get the ball forward. In slippery and torrential conditions that don't cater to high possession and skillful play styles, it's common sense to play the percentages and move the ball forward.
It was something I watched a lot of under RL and in previous years where we tried to do far too much in conditions not suited for it. The players maintained that attitude and RL was never critical of it, it seemed to be part of his anywhere, anytime mantra of his game style trumps all.
At half time JLo was briefly interviewed and asked what went wrong. To paraphrase, he said they played dumb footy and didn't adjust to the conditions. They over possessed the ball and didn't try to take territory resulting in an inability to get the footy forward and having no one stationed there when they finally did.
Now I doubt JLo has had much or any chance to teach the players what to do in wet weather situations and it could just be speculation on my part but I would think the players have been drilled to play a certain way by RL in the past regardless of the situation and we saw the result of that in the second quarter. We played much better football after half time and we would have won if not for that second quarter failure.
I did enjoy the honesty provided by JLo in that half time interview, he was brutally honest as to what went wrong and determined to fix it, announcing we'd be keeping our structure ahead of the ball and not flooding defence as they had done automatically in the second quarter much to JLo's disappointment. It was refreshing and reassured me we're in good hands with JLo at the helm.
