FRIDAY night’s 1-1 draw with Rochedale Rovers left me feeling more frustrated than satisfied.
When you score an equaliser with virtually the last kick of the game, people naturally focus on the character the players showed to keep fighting.
While I won’t question the boys’ effort, the reality is we shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place.
We dominated large parts of the game.
We had plenty of possession, created enough chances and controlled the contest for long periods.
Rochedale sat deep, but I thought we forced them back with the way we moved the ball.
Our biggest issue was the final product.
We simply didn’t take the opportunities we created.
When you fail to capitalise on your chances, you leave yourself vulnerable, and that’s exactly what happened.
The goal we conceded was disappointing because it was avoidable.
For a 10 to 15-minute period in the second half we stopped working as a unit.
A few players got caught ahead of the ball, we switched off collectively and Rochedale took advantage.
Credit to the players for refusing to give up.
Lucas (Martins) popped up with the equaliser in the 96th minute, pretty much the last kick of the game, and that at least ensured we came away with a point.
But I’m not interested in celebrating last gasp draws against teams we should be beating.
Our expectations are much higher than that.
With five games remaining, our top four ambitions are still very much alive.
Results across the competition continue to show how even this league is, with teams taking points off each other every week.
Nobody has run away with those finals’ positions.
That means our destiny is still largely in our own hands.
We know we’ll have a huge game against Gold Coast Knights in a couple of weeks, but before that our focus is solely on Friday night’s away trip to Power.
The equation is simple now.
If we want to play finals football, we must start turning performances like Friday night’s into three points instead of one.
