Speaking in his post-match press conference, Grix said: “”We’re disappointed, obviously, but from where we were in terms of our effort, our desire, and our commitment to each other at London away, I thought we improved quite a bit.
“However, as the game goes, we blink first in the first-half. There were a couple of average individual bits for their first couple of tries. Sutty then should ground the ball instead of trying to scoop it.
“We then fought our way back before half-time and were in a good position. We spoke at half-time about getting into the grind of it again. Cas was teetering, and we just kept giving them little bits.
“Our discipline wasn’t good enough either, and some penalties on plays four and five in yardage really hurt us.
“The second-half was much of the same, and then, with 15 minutes to go, we decided we wanted to play. We played how we practiced, and we moved the ball around and looked to stretch Cas, and we probably bombed a few chances.
“I know it doesn’t feel too positive when you’re losing games, but there was some stuff that I was happy with: moving bodies and getting desperate. There were some individuals among them that took some steps forward for us.”
He continued: “Often the teams, when the scoreboard is almost gone, find that energy. I think the question for us is; can we find it earlier on? It’s easy to find it when the pressures and the chances of getting back in it are almost gone, but the challenge is finding it a little bit earlier.
“Ben (Reynolds) dug into the line, he played straight, he held them up, and he made sure that he got onto the ball. He doesn’t let the game pass him by. For game one, I was pretty impressive. I thought he was good.
“Tiaki (Chan) is a ball of energy. He’s on the small side, but he doesn’t play like a small player. He throws his body into everything. He’s learning; he’s still really young, but he’s come with an energy that we really needed. Hopefully, we can keep hold of him for a little bit longer.
“I was impressed with Harvey (Barron). I thought he did really well. He carried strong for us. It was his first game back after a pretty decent knock, and he didn’t show any signs of being timid around that.
“He came up with some good plays. He’s another one for our future, and hopefully he can keep getting better and better. He’s got some good tools with his height for his position on the field, and the more work he puts in the background, the more we’ll see on gameday.”