Grand Final Thread: Brisbane Broncos vs North Queensland Cowboys, in Sydney?

Up until only a year or 2 ago wasn't the Rugger Finals system only over 2 weeks? Like a week of semi's then the GF? I don't watch it but that and the fact a team can qualify over another with less wins makes me think it's not a code we should look to for inspiration.

Milchcow wrote:


Of course the best solution is to abandon golden point in regular season games altogether, and for finals games play 10 minutes each way before playing field goal shoot-out

Perfect. I wouldn't mind ten minutes each way during the regular season though.

hey guys, surmon1 here, knew you guys had moved over here for a while now & I'm not usually one for taking the ol' Rabbit-style fishing trip, but that one stung bad, doubly so because I experienced it in person... needed to take some time away from rugby league to process it all. I know I'm a bit late  discussing the game (seeing as this has now turned into the golden point thread hahaha) but i wanna get a few things off my chest to finish the therapuetic process:

- hated the decision to kick the penalty goal to go up by 4 when it happened and i hate it more now, it didn't ever feel like it was going to be enough with the numerous miracle finishes the Cowboys conjured up this year (even though it almost was)... could've really used the penalty to set up in Cowboys territory and come away with a try, but instead surrendered field position and gave our blokes a bit of false confidence

- the tactic itself was flawed (as I said above, always felt we needed more points), but after they'd spent the season always giving opposing teams a sniff in close games with their poor kicking, Milf, Hunt & Macca controlled the game perfectly, always finding touch & winding the game clock down,  against any other team it would've seen us raising the trophy.

- prolly a view into my pessimism more than anything, but I'm not so down on Hunt for his error off the kick-off, after I saw we were recieving the kick-off, i saw the writing on the wall from the way the game had been going - we'd get to the 40 or 50, kick it & then the Cowboys would march it right down to our redzone, but this time they'd only need the field goal, a mere formality for JT... Hunt's error put us out of our misery  as far as I'm concerned.

TL;DR hi guys, nice to be amongst you lot again, by the way, losing a grand final after the fulltime siren AND golden point fuckin sucks...

surmo13 wrote:hey guys, surmon1 here, knew you guys had moved over here for a while now & I'm not usually one for taking the ol' Rabbit-style fishing trip, but that one stung bad, doubly so because I experienced it in person... needed to take some time away from rugby league to process it all. I know I'm a bit late  discussing the game (seeing as this has now turned into the golden point thread hahaha) but i wanna get a few things off my chest to finish the therapuetic process:

- hated the decision to kick the penalty goal to go up by 4 when it happened and i hate it more now, it didn't ever feel like it was going to be enough with the numerous miracle finishes the Cowboys conjured up this year (even though it almost was)... could've really used the penalty to set up in Cowboys territory and come away with a try, but instead surrendered field position and gave our blokes a bit of false confidence

- the tactic itself was flawed (as I said above, always felt we needed more points), but after they'd spent the season always giving opposing teams a sniff in close games with their poor kicking, Milf, Hunt & Macca controlled the game perfectly, always finding touch & winding the game clock down,  against any other team it would've seen us raising the trophy.

- prolly a view into my pessimism more than anything, but I'm not so down on Hunt for his error off the kick-off, after I saw we were recieving the kick-off, i saw the writing on the wall from the way the game had been going - we'd get to the 40 or 50, kick it & then the Cowboys would march it right down to our redzone, but this time they'd only need the field goal, a mere formality for JT... Hunt's error put us out of our misery  as far as I'm concerned.

TL;DR hi guys, nice to be amongst you lot again, by the way, losing a grand final after the fulltime siren AND golden point fuckin sucks...

Gday surmon . Speaking of Rabs, I PM'd him on FB today as I worked through my list, surprised he hasn't been on to give it to in his words, the Bozo's.

SI wrote:
Gday surmon .  Speaking of Rabs, I PM'd him on FB today as I worked through my list, surprised he hasn't been on to give it to in his words, the Bozo's.

Congratulations. You have made it so this forum has absolutely no chance to grow.

Big Diesel wrote:

SI wrote:
Gday surmon .  Speaking of Rabs, I PM'd him on FB today as I worked through my list, surprised he hasn't been on to give it to in his words, the Bozo's.

Congratulations. You have made it so this forum has absolutely no chance to grow.

It already has 48 more than yours so I must be doing something right.

What does that have to do with you having more members than Sportal? Because I can go to the Fantasy thread on Sportal and see page after page of you and others crying that Sportal got no new members because of myself, Rabbit, KFP and a few others.

Big Diesel wrote:What does that have to do with you having more members than Sportal? Because I can go to the Fantasy thread on Sportal and see page after page of you and others crying that Sportal got no new members because of myself, Rabbit, KFP and a few others.

Put up or shut up mate. Show me where I once said that you or KFP or Rabs were stopping Sportal from getting new members. Just once is all you require, even though you say page after page apparently.

Hey surmon.

IMO the problem wasn't so much Brisbane taking the 2 points. But that one they had them they stopped trying to score any more.
Kicking for touch to the control the game is all well and good. But broncos were doing it with more than 20 minutes left in the game. Was just asking for trouble.
They'd done similar earlier in the season and got away with it, partially due to good defence, partially luck.
But if linnet could catch the right pass yet would have gone behind long before 80 minute mark. And the way they were playing would have been hard to re-adjust and try scoring points again.

Milchcow wrote:Hey surmon.

IMO the problem wasn't so much Brisbane taking the 2 points. But that one they had them they stopped trying to score any more.
Kicking for touch to the control the game is all well and good. But broncos were doing it with more than 20 minutes left in the game. Was just asking for trouble.
They'd done similar earlier in the season and got away with it, partially due to good defence, partially luck.
But if linnet could catch the right pass yet would have gone behind long before 80 minute mark. And the way they were playing would have been hard to re-adjust and try scoring points again.

that was part of my problem with it, there's no way we're not looking to score 1 more try if we're leading by 2, and scoring 1 more try was what we needed, 4 points seemed to give them a feeling of safety, they should've known that the Cowboys wouldn't die wondering so long as they were within striking distance, but maybe some cast their minds back to the first week of finals and went "we were leading by 4 and shut them out of the game with our defence, so we'll just do that again"

and per your 2nd point, I said above that it wasn't the right tactic for the situation & i've said all along that we needed more points, the point I'm making is that when we tried to execute that tactic through the season, those 3 couldn't find the sideline even if it was lit up like an airport runway. The fact that they were able to all of a sudden nail it with pin-point precision for a fair chunk of time in the biggest game of their lives, bodes well for future occassions when that is actually what we need from them.

I drove from Toowoomba to Sydney for the game with my brother and a mate. We lost fair and square under the rules that everyone knew so that is fair enough. However, I have never been a fan of golden point and the finals should have 10mins eachway in the case of a draw. The Broncos invited the loss onto themselves by playing negative footy for at least 20mins. Also, when Feldt scored in the final seconds, the roar around the stadium was worth the price of the tickets alone. Even if I am still unofficially in mourning. The loss to the Storm in 2008 was easy to get over because of Manly's dominant GF victory. This is the one that got away and it will haunt us until we next win a GF.

The Broncos strategy of lamely and weakly kicking for touch in the last part of the grand final was terrible. People say they executed the plans but the kicks were short, lacked depth and kept the Cowboys in the game. Sure, the Broncos might have had time to reset the defence, but it also gave the Cowboys decent field position, time to structure their attack and showed them the Broncos were negative and not interested in scoring more points. The Cows knew they only had to get one more try, good luck keeping the best player in the game down in that sort of situation.

It was a game plan constructed by the greatest coach of all time....apparently

Ice wrote:The Broncos strategy of lamely and weakly kicking for touch in the last part of the grand final was terrible.  People say they executed the plans but the kicks were short, lacked depth and kept the Cowboys in the game.  Sure, the Broncos might have had time to reset the defence, but it also gave the Cowboys decent field position, time to structure their attack and showed them the Broncos were negative and not interested in scoring more points.  The Cows knew they only had to get one more try, good luck keeping the best player in the game down in that sort of situation.

It wasn't positive football, but seriously, they backed themselves all season to hold their line, and it worked up until the 79th minute of the GF. It took a couple of brain snaps from Ben Hunt to even get the the Cows into position.

Fair go. They held out Melbourne in one of the best defensive efforts I've ever seen. No reason to believe they couldn't do it again. I get Parra and Sharks fans would think it's a bad tactic, but that's because you'd need a chalk board and lots of patience to describe the concept of defense to them in the first place

I won't turn on them. It was an unorthodox season that came within 10 seconds of being unbelievable.

dasherhalo wrote:

It wasn't positive football, but seriously, they backed themselves all season to hold their line, and it worked up until the 79th minute of the GF. It took a couple of brain snaps from Ben Hunt to even get the the Cows into position.

Fair go. They held out Melbourne in one of the best defensive efforts I've ever seen. No reason to believe they couldn't do it again. I get Parra and Sharks fans would think it's a bad tactic, but that's because you'd need a chalk board and lots of patience to describe the concept of defense to them in the first place

I won't turn on them. It was an unorthodox season that came within 10 seconds of being unbelievable.

There was some merit in the tactic generally through the course of the season with only two points on the line, but the execution really was terrible and in a GF, you've got to win the game, not hope the other teams lose it. In my view it was simply the wrong attitude, and that was born out in the result. Im not sure what Parra or the sharks have to do with it.

That game against Melbourne, yep it was solid defense, but seriously, Cam Smith played an absolute lone hand in that game for Melbourne, i couldn't believe with the amount of sets they had, how feeble the attacks they produced were, and they certainly didn't have anything like the attack we know the Cows can produce. If they were using that effort as their benchmark then they were sadly mistaken.

1 minute, 10 minutes, it matters little.

Ice wrote:

There was some merit in the tactic generally  through the course of the season with only two points on the line, but the execution really was terrible and in a GF, you've got to win the game, not hope the other teams lose it.  In my view it was simply the wrong attitude, and that was born out in the result.  Im not sure what Parra or the sharks have to do with it.

That game against Melbourne, yep it was solid defense, but seriously, Cam Smith played an absolute lone hand in that game for Melbourne, i couldn't believe with the amount of sets they had, how feeble the attacks they produced were, and they certainly didn't have anything like the attack we know the Cows can produce.  If they were using that effort as their benchmark then they were sadly mistaken.

1 minute, 10 minutes, it matters little.

Hard to argue, seeing as we lost. I'm just saying we were one tackle away from it working. In a GF. Against a powerful attacking side like the Cows.

It just seems like there's too many arm chair experts saying it was obviously destined to fail - you really can't get any closer to it "working" than they did.

dasherhalo wrote:

Hard to argue, seeing as we lost. I'm just saying we were one tackle away from it working. In a GF. Against a powerful attacking side like the Cows.

It just seems like there's too many arm chair experts saying it was obviously destined to fail - you really can't get any closer to it "working" than they did.

I think you were one tackle away in spite of the tactic, not because of it. I never said it was destined to fail though, i just said it was negative footy in a GF against a team you know can score points from anywhere.

Ice wrote:

I think you were one tackle away in spite of the tactic, not because of it.  I never said it was destined to fail though, i just said it was negative footy in a GF against a team you know can score points from anywhere.

Not you mate - sorry, I'm dragging that assumption from external sources, not this forum, or yourself.