‘We’re better than what we showed tonight’

Dolphins NRL Head Coach Kristian Woolf says his side will need to get over their crushing defeat to the Roosters, in what was a spiteful clash, and focus on correcting what went wrong before they face the Broncos next week.

The Indigenous round game, in front of 24 117 fans, was fiery from the outset culminating in the sin binning of Dolphins Francis Molo and Aublix Tawha, and Roosters Spencer Leniu and Naufahu Whyte in the ninth minute.

The fracas happened moments after the Roosters’ Mark Nawaqanitawase scored a try.

The Dolphins lost the game 64-12.

During the post-game press conference, Woolf said he didn’t understand why his two players were sent off, saying the incident was instigated by Leniu and Whyte.

“I just don’t understand the sin binnings, to be honest with you. A couple of minutes before that we had a very slightly high tackle and (Roosters) blokes run in everywhere to get a penalty. I don’t get how we’re allowed to do that,” he said.

“The opposition score, two of their players come over … we’re standing in the dead ball area and two guys come over pushing and shoving and shaping up. I don’t know what our blokes are supposed to do.

“I’d ask the question there, do we have to allow ourselves to get punched to not get sin binned, when there’s a man standing in front of you with his hands up ready to … shaping up. I don’t know what our blokes are supposed to do.

“That’s not why we lost the game. We need to be a lot better than that, but I just don’t understand that situation.”

Dolphins Captain Isaiya Katoa was also perplexed.

“I’m a little bit similar to Woolfy there. They’ve just scored and they’re coming past and giving our boys a mouthful … our boys are not just going to stand there and just cop it. When someone’s going to arc up like that, you’ve got to stand up for yourself,” he said.

Woolf said it didn’t cost the Dolphins the game, they were outplayed in defence and attack, but emotion played a part.

“We maybe got a little bit caught up in the emotion at the start. We, obviously, started physical … there was plenty of emotion in it. You could see that. I think the Roosters got back down to playing footy and worrying about what they were doing footywise a bit quicker than we did. We just never seemed to get over that,” he said.

“I don’t think we gave ourselves any chance, to be honest. We spent the majority of that game … and we’ve been a bit guilty of that a few times where we were a little bit ill-disciplined with how we were defending teams coming out of yardage. We made a few more errors in what we were doing, coming out of our own end as well which doubles down on that. You end up spending the whole time defending your line and we just didn’t do that well.”

He said they can recover from the loss.

“We get over it and we get into next week. That’s what we do,” Woolf said.

“We need to get over tonight. We need to have a look at what we got wrong and we need to worry about next week. Obviously, we’ve got some cleaning up to do but we’ll look at how we do that through the week.”

Ray Stone’s fitness ahead of the Battle For Brisbane could be in doubt after he left the field, seemingly troubled by an issue with his right arm.

He has been playing the AC joint pain for much of the season.

“I’m not too sure on Ray just yet. He was quite obviously pretty sore,” Woolf said.

Mark Nicholls should be OK to play after passing a HIA following a head knock during the game.

So, was this Dolphins loss expected after so much adversity this season and so many top 30 players out injured?

“No, I don’t think so. We’re better than what we showed tonight.”

Game photo gallery

By Dominika Lis