The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Round 1

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West Beach Titans

The Good:
They didn’t look too old to compete. Managed to play decent match and zone defence and ran out the whole game nearly pulling off a big comeback.

The Bad:
The Titans are by far the tallest team this year, in my opinion they didn’t make full use of that on Monday night. They tried to huck a lot but it was often to disadvantage, there were times when they did use their height and it looked good. Just not enough to come away with the win.

The Ugly:
Hucks - Tim Davis yelled it best on Monday – “We just can’t huck it that way, stop trying!” (Or something along those lines)

East Adelaide Force

The Good:
Although Max’s 1G, 7A, 2B performance stole the show on Monday, the Force had contributors everywhere. Wachtel, Bamford Clark and Gunson all had 2 blocks, Lyttle with 200 receiving metres, Patil with 199, Tan with a handy 159 throwing metres and Tran with 3G, 2A, 2B was solid as well. Eichner will have the pieces to succeed when him and Sam Caon return, the question is can he put it all together fast enough.

The Bad:
Too many soft turnovers, the Force had 24 turnovers, only 6 of which came as a result of Titan blocks. Gave up the disc far too easily, weren’t made to pay this week however and have time to adjust going forward.

The Ugly:
Endzone eyes, the Force had a poor 57% completion when throwing into their scoring endzone, for reference the other three teams were all hovering around 64%. The difference in those numbers is only 2 extra conversions a game but with how close the teams are, 2 points a game could be the difference between being in the final and the 3rd place game in week 7.

Northern Flyers

The Good:
Jack Donaldson full receiver mode, often being pigeonholed into handling due to his strong throwing, Donaldson was unleashed as a receiver on Monday and put up a monstrous 465 receiving metres to go with 5G and 2A.

The Bad:
Conversely to the Force, the Flyers only had 2 players in the top 20 score getters, while also having 3 of the 7 players who recorded negatives on the night. The Flyers need to find a way to get everyone involved to find consistent success.

The Ugly:
The Flyers were up 7-5 on Monday before giving up 6 straight to be down 7-11 with 15 minutes to play and the game be virtually out of reach. Flyers will find it hard to win many games if they can’t slow down the opposition when they have a run on.

Southside Riptide

The Good:
Harry Buckland. Harry had a career best Super League game with an industrious 6G, 2A, 2B performance. Topped only by the aforementioned Donaldson in receiving metres (352 metres), Buckland also tacked on a useful 134 throwing metres including an impressive 31 metre assist (1:14:23) to Saldarriaga.

The Bad:
The biggest weakness I can find from the Tide on Monday was their handler defence, a lot of Flyers offence was generated from the up the line looks and swings that come off too easy. The few times they made it tough resulted in turnovers, if the Tide can tighten the screws on this they could become almost untouchable

The Scary:
I couldn’t find an ugly for the reigning champs, so I’ve changed it to “The Scary”. The Tide managed to put together a strong win without their top receiver and marquee pick Matthew Gordon. Although they won’t play together until Round 4, if Matt and Harry can play in the same receiver core effectively, the Riptide will quickly become a matchup headache for opposing captains.

And this one is for the whole league

The Good:
The vibes were immaculate on Monday night, an appropriate amount of heckling, fantasy talk and loud spectators led to a great atmosphere despite the windy weather. Let’s hope we get 6 more rounds of that, heaps of fun.

The Bad:
Timing and scoring - seriously guys it’s not that hard

The Ugly:
Catching. Across both games there was twenty-nine (29!) drops. That is more drops than any round of super league from the last two years (yes, I actually checked). We’re on stream fellas, let’s catch better next week.