Wests Tigers head coach Benji Marshall has revealed he is the one to blame for his side's horror loss to the St George Illawarra Dragons at Kogarah on Saturday evening.
Despite scoring the first try of the game through Adam Doueihi, poor discipline and defensive efforts - particularly late in the game after an injury to Apisai Koroisau - let the club down as they slumped to their seventh loss in nine starts.
The Dragons, who won just their second game of the year in the process, were sloppy with the ball in hand, but did enough to stay in front of what was a tight contest, before scoring three late tries.
Marshall had warned coming into the game that his side would need to be at their best to defeat the struggling Dragons, and admitted post-game that his message hadn't sunk in well enough with the playing group who competed as if it was simply going to happen at times.
“That's on me as a coach because I've got to go and look at the preparation we had and then how we turned up with that performance today,” Marshall said during his post-match press conference.
“I've got to take accountability as the coach and the end of the day that starts and stops with me.
“We got exactly what we deserved today, to be honest. Our discipline, attention to detail, care wasn't good enough.
“So full credit to the Dragons because they earned their win and we were poor.”
The issues for the Tigers were present right throughout the course of the game, with a number of penalties for high or dangerous contact awarded for the Dragons.
The hosts made 17 errors, but the Tigers produced plenty of sloppiness, making 14 of their own and not troubling a Dragons defensive line often enough as they looked to make things right with a big home crowd on hand.
“I don't want to get too deep into it because we were way off, but we legged them out of yardage, penalty after penalty, silly moments, errors, and they capitalised,” Marshall said when asked specifically what went wrong for his side.
“It just wasn't good enough.”
Maybe of greater concern for the stumbling Tigers attack was that one of their tries came early against 12 men, and the other off a Dragons error.
The Tigers, who at one stage were viewed as a chance for the top four, have held a negative for and against of more than 180 points over the last nine games with just two wins, and pressure is steadily building on a club who are now likely to be without Koroisau for the remainder of the year after he suffered a suspected torn pectoral muscle.
The Concord-based outfit have just six days off before they clash with the New Zealand Warriors next Friday at Campbelltown Sports Stadium.
