Easts coach Simon Craig said his young squad learnt some tough lessons in the opening two rounds of the competition but is hopeful those lessons will accelerate his team’s development ahead of an important round four clash against Souths this weekend. 

The Tigers matched Jeeps for 40 minutes in their round one clash but struggled in the second half and lost three players to yellow cards in a 35-15 loss. 

“I was really happy with our first 40 minutes,” Craig told Rugby News. 

“We were right in the game at half time, but in the second half we made a few errors, the bounce of the ball didn’t go our way and things just compounded from there. 

“When you spend as much time as we did defending our line, most of the time you’re going to concede points or penalties and unfortunately we conceded three yellow cards trying to stop points and the game got away from us. 

“The second 40 was tough, but a lot of young men learnt some good lessons that day.”

A week later, they were beaten fairly comprehensively by defending premiers Brothers, but Craig said there were still positives to take from that match. 

“They have a lot of talent and experience. A lot of players with Super Rugby experience and others with plenty of Premier Rugby caps under their belt.

“Good luck to them though. As a club, Brothers are probably where Easts were four or so years ago and they started their rebuilding process then.

“They are the benchmark and it was good for our guys to see the level we need to strive to get to.”

While Craig said his side showed glimpses of their best in the opening two rounds, he described other parts of their game as a “trainwreck” and said he was forced to make changes to his side after a bye in round three to prepare for Saturday’s clash against Souths. 

“There were some guys that just didn’t perform and as a coach, it’s my job to make tough decisions. 

“If you leave players in a side, the rest of the playing group notice it and they think they can perform poorly and keep their spot. You end up undermining your own authority and we can’t afford that at this point it time. 

Craig said the Tigers need to find a way to stay in the game for longer periods against the better sides in the competition and seemed fairly confident about their match up against a Souths side that challenged Brothers last weekend. 

“I think the changes we’ve made in the forward pack will help us play a little tougher and stay in the fight for longer,” he said. 

“Souths are a very good side. They are big and physical but for us, being a little smaller and a little faster, we think we can use that to our advantage and turn it into a real contest.”

In the rounds other matches, Norths host Bond, UQ take on Brothers and Sunnybank play GPS. 

“I was surprised by the result between Sunnybank and Norths,” Craig explained. 

“I think everyone thought Sunnybank were playing pretty well and that Norths would struggle but I think that result suggests that Sunnybank are getable and Norths are probably better than we thought they were. 

“Bond have probably underperformed so far and I don’t think UQ have quite worked themselves out yet either so there are a lot of questions to be answered by a lot of sides in the weeks ahead, us included, and that makes it a really interesting comp.”