{"id":101802,"date":"2021-07-18T10:56:50","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T10:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=101802"},"modified":"2021-07-18T11:59:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T11:59:45","slug":"joey-fires-up-at-ridiculous-moses-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=101802","title":{"rendered":"Joey fires up at 'ridiculous' Moses criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight Immortal Andrew Johns has fired back at the "ridiculous" criticism of Mitch Moses' State of Origin debut for NSW in their game three loss to Queensland.<\/a><\/p>\n

Moses partnered Jack Wighton to form an all-new halves pairing<\/a> for NSW amid some conjecture Souths stars and former Blues Adam Reynolds and Cody Walker should have been handed the No.6 and No.7 jerseys by Brad Fittler.<\/p>\n

After slow start, Moses finished the night with two try assists and a handful of big defensive plays in the 20-18 loss. But despite his efforts, the newcomer was quickly being pinned in some circles as the scapegoat of NSW's missed series sweep.<\/p>\n

It led Parramatta icon Peter Sterling to launch an impassioned defence of the halfback this weekend<\/a>. And now Johns, who works closely with Mitchell at the Eels, says he's heard enough.<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

"It's ridiculous," Johns said of the criticism being cast Moses' way.<\/p>\n

"To go in as your first game as the halfback and run the show, it's incredibly difficult.<\/p>\n

"I've spoken to Mitchell about his performance, obviously I work with him at Parramatta, I thought early on he found it difficult to impose himself on the game \u2013 whether that was about combinations with Jack Wighton but also Damien Cook. But I thought as the game went on longer, the more comfortable he looked.<\/p>\n

"The last 10 minutes when the game was on the line, that's when he really stood up."<\/p>\n

\"Mitch<\/p>\n

Moses and Wighton had their moments in Origin III but were unable to steer the Blues past a rejuvenated Maroons outfit spurred on by some heroic plays by Ben Hunt and Kalyn Ponga.<\/p>\n

Still, Sterling was perplexed at some of the criticism filtering Moses' way.<\/p>\n

"I'm sick and tired of Mitchell Moses' name being mentioned," Sterling told Triple M.<\/p>\n

"He had a fine game. His defence was superb, his kicking was excellent. If there was a criticism I had he maybe didn't push up enough on the back of the forwards, when they went forward and there might've been some second-phase play.<\/p>\n

\"Tempers<\/p>\n

"Again, the people who are criticising were the ones who said his job was to get the ball to Latrell Mitchell and Tom Trbojevic.<\/p>\n

"And then the statistic comes out that he had no runs for no metres \u2026 some of the best games I ever played I had no runs for no metres, you can make them appear the way that you want.<\/p>\n

"I'm over the criticism. I love Adam Reynolds and I love Cody Walker and I respect them enormously as players \u2013 I don't even know why they're in the conversation now."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eight Immortal Andrew Johns has fired back at the "ridiculous" criticism of Mitch Moses' State of Origin debut for NSW in their game three loss […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101804,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101802\/revisions\/101804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}