Over the opening four rounds it's become apparent to me that the simple philosophy of punching up the middle for five tackles and then kicking into the corner no longer works. In fact, this season it's one of the most error ridden styles to attempt to play.
Why is that so? Well, put simply it's to do with physics. If you cart the ball up, one-out, you're going to get hit by three to four defenders, all coming in at different angles. They are then going to lock the ball up and you're going to wrestle to get to the ground as quickly as possible and then try to stand up as quickly as possible. All the while defenders are around the ball and then you've got to play the ball.
There are plenty of opportunities for the ball to pop out and concede possession. In Manly's most recent game, they made five mistakes due to contact/poor grip on the ball, two mistakes due to poor handling in terms of catching and three mistakes due to a poor decision being made by the ball carrier.
The commonly accepted view is that spreading the ball results in mistakes. Indeed, poorly timed passes or inaccurate passes are generally going to lead to a mistake. But as can be seen in the above stats, you're much more likely to drop the ball when simply hitting the ball up one-out.
When the ball is spread to the edges, attackers are generally only faced by one to two defenders with one of those defenders almost guaranteed to attack the legs, therefore only one player is attacking the ball and as a result there are less chances of losing the ball in the wrestle.
This why I believe we are seeing sides who are prepared to move the ball around more sitting in the top eight. Apart from Melbourne, the rest of the top eight sides like to move the ball around the park early.
Looking at the sides sitting outside of the top eight you have teams who like to go up the middle. The Warriors are the outliers here and that's because when they attack, they have rather poor ball security and too many times they try the miracle pass.
Obviously moving the ball two passes from the ruck isn't the only thing that's going to win you games. However, with these new rules, teams who take advantage of the spaces out-wide and then back their defence are going to win more games than they lose.
Trying to simply truck it through the middle of the field limits your offensive gains and puts a lot of pressure on the ball-carriers.
If teams like the Roosters and Cowboys don't change the way they play they won't score too many points. It's still early days in the season but it seems fairly obvious that going up the middle is no longer the best option to score points and win matches.
See Brian Smith's article: http://www.smithyspeaks.com.au/parra-too-simple-is-out/
Replies
SuperEel as much as you like to imitate Phil in writing style you need to learn to imitate him in substance.
It is quite preposterous to say that playing one-out football is more likely to incur errors than spreading the ball all over the place. Similarly, it is ridiculous to say that one-out football (or simple football as you have defined it) is going to win you football matches against quality defenses (which we found out under Kearney and Ricky).
If you have a physically dominant pack you can get a good roll on and if you have a scheming dummy half, he can create from around the ruck, but how are you going to turn field position into points? Then you use your width.
Similarly, if you have a smaller forward pack that cannot make significant meters over the advantage line, then second phase play is the order of the day (Parra circa 2009 and the Tigers every year other than this year) to get the ball up field to use your width.
While it is true we have scored some long range tries this year, that is probably attributable to the likes of Radradra who is just so damned hard to tackle, but it isn't always going to work.
We have had success attacking the fringes and going 'around' teams but that is only after a good platform has been set by the forward pack. You seem to think that spreading the ball wide without first earning the right to spread it will breed success.
You would be wrong!
I'm not imitating Phil by any stretch. My idea actually came from a Brian Smith article. I didn't say that teams shouldn't go through the middle. What I was saying was that teams who have one style of play, which is essentially hit it up the middle, they're more likely to make mistakes. You can lay a platform through the middle and then shift it wide. The Roosters won the comp last year by laying a good foundation and then going wide. They won because they had terrific edge runners in the form of SBW, Cordner and Aubusson.
Against us, the Roosters failed to shift the ball crisply to our edges and thus struggled in the try-scoring department and have done so the past couple of weeks. Where did the biggest threats against us come from against the Roosters? The edge. Where twice SBW was denied a try due to last ditch efforts by Hayne. You may point to the Moa try but those types are few and far between. Even Tupou's try was made by running a straight line on the edge.
I'm not going to go trawling through every game so far this year. But watch the games over the weekend and have a look how many times you see a player knock on in the tackle/play the ball.
I've actually pointed out above that Manly made more mistakes in the tackle/play the ball than they did spreading it wide.
I know some people may not agree with me because I'm challenging a commonly held belief in rugby league, but just because it's commonly held, doesn't mean it's correct.
I've had a long-held desire to do a proper analysis of the probability of injuries taking place versus respective playing styles. Given that injuries are one of the core factors that affect your ability to sustain success across a year, it would make sense to take this into consideration when you're deciding upon a playing style. I'd hypothesise that when you play a more expansive games you also decrease your chance of injuries occurring because there are far more one-on-one tackles and therefore less contorting of the tackled player's body.
I'd like to see an analysis of error rates on the same basis. I think you could be right Super that an under-estimated percentage of errors take place because of the collision rather than due to catching failures. Even down to the number of errors that arise from unseen hand-on-the-ball when there are a lot of bodies about.
And I'll give another wrap to Paulo here. I would also suggest a very significant number of errors come from short-balls. If you don't have players that deliver very good short-balls, that's when teams can get on a roll of making errors. Paulo not only delivers very well-times short balls, but, again as we've discussed previously, his physical threat also helps the runner because the defence holds off a little. Paulo's thrown a lot of those little passes with the side making very few errors.
After one game, our opponents just compressed their defense and smashed us, and now Kearney's a Bronco's "waterboy".
Theres a happy medium to be found between simple and spread and I think we're there at the moment.
I agree in a way. When you play predictable, up the middle footy, the defence can really take aim at you, However if you show that you are willing to throw it around and run angles it can take some the the sting out of a defence and reduce errors from hard hits.
I also agree if you are willing to spread pretty early you can make some easy metres.
I think people are wrong when they say Melbourne plays a straight carting style, I think Bellamy let's them play to their strenghts
Peats has been our biggest weapon in making metres though. He knows when to get involved. When to dart, when to give quick ball. He's an example of how the Hooker is pretty much the most valuable player on the field in the modern game.
But many commentators have pointed out this year that the new ruck rules, from rules about third man in to scrutiny of lifting, are to an extent lessening collisions. There is less gang tackling. Now if you're correct that less collisions is better, and if the commentators are right that the new ruck rules are taking some of the collision out of the collision, then might not the new rules encourage more ruck running not less? As time goes on and sources of error become apparent?
If you can clarify your argument with those points in mind that would be good.
The new rules encourage quick play the balls. So obviously it would make sense to make metres up the middle. However, my point would still be that you're still going to get hit by two or more tacklers. You really only get into a one on one situation in the middle if you're the hooker running from dummy-half or running a very good angle. Even if the lifting is removed, I'd say (and there is some level of speculation here) that you'd still see lost balls around the ruck. From watching the games, the majority of knock-ons either occur in the first up collision or in the wrestle with multiple defenders.
Even with the new rules and quicker play-the-balls, you'll see teams go 2-3 tackles up the middle and then go wide as there will be a lot of room out there with the retreating defence.
So to continue with what I have posted, in the match just completed, Souths Vs Bulldogs there were 11 knock-ons in total.
Of those six occurred due to contact in the tackle/play the ball error. Five occurred due to poor handling, none due to poor decisions from the ball-player. The field break down saw nine of those eleven errors occur in the forwards/middle of the field.
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