Ivan Cleary believes his players were beaten before they got to the ground after their upset 38-32 loss to an undermanned and written off Roosters side in Round 2.
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The Panthers never stopped trying for 80 minutes, but after drawing level multiple times, they couldn’t find a way to get the job done in an early favourite for upset of the season.
“That game was lost before we got here, I think for whatever reason,” Cleary said.
“We never got here thinking we were going to be perfect, and that’s never something we talk about.
“Even in the first round, we weren’t perfect at all. But we just weren’t, there’s enough players tonight that weren’t anywhere near their best and collectively we just didn’t play anywhere near what we’d like to, so that should have been better than what we tossed up tonight.”
Despite the disappointing loss, Cleary was proud of his players for never giving up.
“It’s sort of cold comfort,” Cleary said.
“There’s something cool about that too, the boys don’t know when they’re beaten. Always trying to find a way.
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“Last year, I thought particularly, we won different styles of footy games throughout the year.
“Tonight’s game was nothing like we want, but the job’s to win the game, so at the end there, they were just trying to find whatever way they could to try and get it done, but it just wasn’t happening tonight. I don’t know why.”
Cleary believes the game and the result was an example of why sport is so special.
“Those ones are hard to have all the answers, but I guess it’s why we all love sports so much,” Cleary said.
“It’s just the classic upset. The unbackable favourites against the group of kids. Score the easy try to start the game, I’ve seen that a million times.
“And then, credit to the Roosters, they just gave it a red-hot crack and in the end were good enough to get the win.”
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Cleary believes his team got complacent after scoring the first try of the night and the game.
“I think it’s undoubtedly there’s some part of that would be true,” Cleary said.
“I think mostly it’s between the ears before the games played where there’s enough distraction or whatever, which could have been a number of things, but I just felt like that’s the classic upset and why we all love sport.
“Unfortunately, we were the ones that brought it to life tonight, but we just have to make sure that in our journey that we put that to good use somewhere.”
While he couldn’t put his finger on what caused the complacency, Cleary preferred to credit the Roosters.
“It could be any number of factors to be honest, but it wasn’t like we were out of energy by the end of the game, which I did like,” Cleary said.
“There was something cool about that too, this team never knows when they’re beaten, but clearly it was a display that we’re certainly not proud of.
“But again credit to the Roosters they were very undermanned and just showed why they’ve been a winning club for so long.”
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Panthers skipper refused to use a Vegas hangover as an excuse.
“No, not from Vegas, but I thought credit to them,” Yeo said.
“I just felt like they out-competed us for most parts of the game, they probably showed that particularly on their last plays, they just seemed to just come down with catches and we just didn’t have resolve, actually, if the team made a mistake to actually defend it on the back of it and help him out, so that was disappointing.
“We didn’t have much control on both sides of the ball. I felt like they were winning a lot of their contacts and getting in positions to put in attacking kicks and put us under pressure and then on the other side, I was guilty too, just forced the ball sideways for long stretches, so I wouldn’t put down to Vegas. I thought they played well.”
Dylan Edwards came off late with a groin injury, but Cleary believes he could have played on.
“It’s a bit of a groin strain, so I don’t know how bad it is,” Cleary said.
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“I mean he could have kept playing, but just the way the game was and what we needed at the time, we had a fresh fullback sitting on the bench there and that was why we made that call.”
Cleary refused to use the players the Panthers have lost as a reason for their slow starts to the year.
“I don’t know if it’s losing players,” Cleary said.
“I think pretty much every year, you’ll see swings in performance by lots of teams at the start of the year.
“You see a good game, and then maybe not such a good game. That’s fairly normal but it’s not something you’d accept.
“The last few years in particular, we haven’t won a lot of games at the start of the year.
“There’s all these different factors, but at the end of the day, I just thought today we just weren’t anywhere near good enough, so something that we need to sort out heading into next week, clearly.”
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