I have just watched the short highlights reel on BTSport. Clearly they had to show the tries, and not much else (aside from Brad's offences), but from the reel the game looks entirely one sided.
So, what did I notice? Clearly the defence, and how cohesive it was, and how quick it was to recover. Very few missed tackles, and how we forced the Bears errors.
But that wasn't all. A good defence doesn't win games.
On field decisions were being made, in the main, correctly. No silly tap and goes at penalty time. Positionally, the backs seem to be getting it right at last in broken play. Here, the one thing that really helped was Crossdale. He is a true full back. It was his positional play, being in the right place at the right time, his nouse in going forwards, that gave us an extra man. I can understand why he got MOM.
More than that, Umaga had an almost perfect game. He was making the right calls time after time, as was Robson. The only thing that let Jacob down was his bogey, the placed kick. He really needs to spend weeks in Jimmys school of kicking.
Fifita put in a heck of a shift, but hasn't learned to be in the right place in our attack in broken play. When the full game video appears, watch and mark where he is when we break Bears and go into the broken attack phases. He is in the wrong place. He spent too much time doing what we have other guys can do by turning the ball over. We have enough grafters like Oghre, Willis, Shields, Cardall, Stooke, Morris and Alo (in this match) to do that. The coaches need to get him sweeping out to the centre. He almost got the idea at times, but he rushed forwards far too much, often overruning the pass line. He needs to sweep around behind our defence instead. The other thing I noticed that Dickson did not pick up at all was the number of times that Fifita was in the air in the lineout and got hit.
If you watch Dickson, his peripheral vision is what he lacks. He gets too focussed on one line for too long. I hope he will learn and remember to scan the field more.