While the South Sydney Rabbitohs were left wondering 'what if' after being defeated 25-16 by an impressive Wests Tigers side, coach Michael Maguire didn't believe the loss of concussed fullback Greg Inglis early in the game's proceedings was to blame.
In a night that saw several concussions occur, Maguire, who commented earlier in the week about the positive side of the new concussion protocols put forward by the NRL, noted that at the end of the day the club has to look after the health of the Queensland and Australian representative.
"We got a squad that's very capable of getting better performances then what we showed today," Maguire said.
"I'm happy with the way the game's going through with what they're doing – they're very thorough at how they're looking at it. It was unfortunate, I think both teams had an incident there where we had to roll people off, and it was just unfortunate that Greg had to go the whole game.
"He should be okay – it probably was more precautionary – we got to go through the concussion [protocol] as we do and we've got to look after Greg."
A clearly disappointed Maguire said poor discipline and execution was to blame for his side's unusually ugly performance.
"[With] the possession and the drop ball we just never gave ourselves an opportunity to build any pressure throughout the game. You can't win games of footy if you can't hang onto the ball," Maguire said.
"It was just a bad night for us. Unfortunately, it all came out at once. We just to need make sure we do the things at training – I mean the way we're training we're very thorough in what we're doing and the boys are working very hard but we need to just keep sticking to the things that we know [work]. We've just got to work hard.
"We've just got to really look at the little things we're doing through training and how we're training and make sure we just get back to what we can do."
