The Bulldogs’ flimsy defence towards the Eels “pi**ed off” coach Cameron Ciraldo a lot that he’s hinted some huge modifications to the facet.
The Dogs missed a whopping 54 tackles within the 34-12 loss. The coach was upset to say the least — and put the blowtorch on his extra skilled gamers.
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“Defensively we were terrible,” Ciraldo mentioned.
“The 54 missed tackles shows that. A lot of lack of effort off the ball, no togetherness in our defence and just some really poor tackling which pi**es me off the most.”
“We’ve got young players but we’ve also got some older guys there that need to do better.
“The young players are going to learn on the run and are going to make mistakes but I didn’t feel like they made a lot of them tonight. I thought our best three players were Karl Oloapu, Khaled Rajab and Jacob Preston so we need the more experienced guys to help them.”
Tevita Pangai Junior, who has been tipped to overlook out on NSW choice for Origin II, was caught out a few instances defensively however Ciraldo was capable of finding the positives in his intent.
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“I thought he started all right,” he mentioned.
“I said to them if you’re going to make a mistake defensively tonight make it going hard and he went hard twice. He got the detail wrong but there no one inside on to help save his arse and that’s what good teams do.
“We made seven linebreaks tonight to six, they scrambled way better than we did — that’s not the team we want to be.
“We want to build this club on defence and to have that many points put on you and miss 54 tackles is not what we’re going to be about.”
Ciraldo has made a number of tweaks to his 17 this season and indicated extra could possibly be coming — particularly after the membership’s New South Wales Cup facet smashed the Eels 64-12.
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“We’ve got a system in place… Everyone’s been given a chance to show they can do this system but at the moment if they can’t, we’re going to have to find people that can,” he mentioned.
“Our NSW Cup side won convincingly, they scored 64 points but it’s their defence that’s impressed me the most. Some of those guys are really putting their hand up to play NRL.
“I thought our attack looked more dangerous at times so we are getting the combinations right there in attack but defensively it’s not where it needs to be and I need to find the people that can get it to where it needs to be.”
One participant that’s placing their hand up is halfback-turned-hooker Kyle Flanagan, who scored 4 tries and arrange one other within the reserve grade win.
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Flanagan has shifted to No.9 ever since he was dropped in Round 9 and has seemed very snug within the new function.
“He’s training really well, he’s really bought into the new position,” Ciraldo mentioned.
“He’s probably in an unlucky position at the moment where he’s behind our captain but he’s doing everything possible to force his way into the team… maybe at some stage that might mean a bench spot moving forward.”
Source: www.foxsports.com.au