Wests Tigers fullback James Tedesco says his side are desperate to bounce back from a disappointing last-start defeat to the Newcastle Knights, saying that the style of footy they played last Sunday isn’t the way they want to play in 2016.
Leading early in the match, Wests Tigers clawed their way back to 18-16 midway through the second half against Newcastle, but were unable to finish off the match, falling to their fourth straight loss as the Knights held on for a narrow two-point win.
And according to Tedesco — who extended his lead as the NRL’s top try-scorer with another four-pointer against the Knights — the team know their performance wasn’t up to standard, and are looking forward to having the chance to turn it around this Sunday afternoon when they take on the Melbourne Storm at Leichhardt Oval.
“It just wasn’t good enough from us,” Tedesco reflected on the game.
“Our completions and how we treated the ball wasn’t up to NRL standards.
“JT [Jason Taylor] got up us a bit after the game for the way we played and he’s right. We’ve got a lot to work on, especially coming up against a quality side like the Storm. We can’t let them off the hook like we did against Newcastle a lot of times on the weekend.
“I think we’ve just been overplaying our hand too much,” he said.
“Sometimes we just need to tuck the ball under our arm and kick to the corners and pin them down there. When we get in those grinding games, we need to learn that we can’t always play the style of footy that we did in those first two games of the year.
“Especially against teams like the Storm, who are so good, we have to grind it out and know when we need to complete our sets and know when to play our footy.”
Be there for Sunday afternoon footy at Leichhardt Oval when we take on the Storm!
