Scorpions captain, Isaac Conway, talks about his side’s loss to Tasmania, in this week’s Scorpion’s Tale.
Last weekend was a pretty disappointing one, losing to Tassie in Hobart.
While the trip was pretty good and everyone’s getting along pretty well, to play so poorly was really disappointing.
The preparation was a bit different to normal, since we only arrived on Friday and then we had an early morning Saturday game, meaning we had to get up really early as well.
I think the conditions were a bit of a shock, especially playing in the morning, coming down from Queensland.
But, at the end of the day, we can’t blame the conditions, we came out against Tassie and we made them look a lot better than they are, and now we have a huge challenge to get up against NSW/ACT.
I went down expecting to win and we had looked at ways to manipulate their players and on the day we just didn’t follow through on that.
It was a terrible feeling after the game.
Everyone was disappointed at themselves but also we felt like we let our coaches down.
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about playing relentless and ruthless footy and we just didn’t do that against Tassie and it felt like we were just going through the motions at some points.
When we got back to the airport, I spoke to a few of the guys and basically just said we need to come out against NSW and have a really good performance.
After a loss like the weekend, there’s no escaping the negatives.
You talk about it after the match and then we had to go over the vision again on Monday at training.
We know we can match it with them, and we went toe to toe with Vic Metro and just fell away, so to come out and play so poorly on Saturday was really disappointing and it was tough after the game to have to relive that.
One of the more frustrating parts of it was that in the last quarter, when we hit targets and switched the ball a bit more, we looked dangerous and we actually exposed them – unfortunately, it was too little, too late.
We’ve struggled a lot with our starts this year and I think sometimes when a side gets a roll on against us, there’s a tendency to drop our heads.
We haven’t kicked the first goal of a game or the first couple and our last few games have shown how important it is to get off to a good start.
There have been a few injuries so far, which has made it harder, but I think state footy is about overcoming those and still playing well against interstate reams.
Before the game, we had spoken about everyone talking to each other and then it was left to one or two players, and there’s not enough encouragement of each other.
There was too few players saying things like “yeah, let’s get the next one,” and supporting eachother.
We’re going to have to be tough on each other and work on those things if we want to improve.
More than anything, though, I wish we had that moment over again.
It’s a bit like last year, when we just lost to Tassie in Queensland in our first match, you just want to go back and re-play the game.
To lose like that last year and then play them again down there and play so poorly, it just makes me feel sick.
I think this year hurts more, because we played so far below the level we can and we fell away from our game plan.
It’s really hard to talk about it after a game like that, but now my focus is firmly on proving we’re not easy beats against NSW/ACT.
I hate losing to NSW and I am really looking forward to getting out this weekend and showing everyone we can play.
No one’s going to rate us to beat NSW and I know they’ll come out as tough as Tassie and we have to be ready for that.
