Brad Arthur has consistently stressed completion rates as the area to work on but completion aside, after watching I still feel there are some key areas our team should work on A LOT in order to stay competitive.
1. Linespeed in defence - Our team hasn't been penalised much this year for being in the 10, purely because we're standing 11-12m back most of the time. This is fine most of the time if you're rushing up in defence and restricting the opposition's metres but the trend has continued in every losing match we've played: Roosters, Manly, Tigers, Cowboys and Panthers. What they all have in common is our defence is not rushing up quick enough CONSISTENTLY, particularly in the 2nd half to make the tackle and wrap the ball up. We've been letting the opposition make easy metres and offload far more than necessary and this creates broken play, which we're not good in terms of defending against.
2. Last tackle options - This has been more important this year with the rule changes because a quick tap restart from the opposition now comes with another tackle hence it's far more important to kick better. Whilst Sandow has kicked well at times, there have been awful options taken by both our halves, kicking the ball directly to fullback or winger.
We need to attempt to kick in between their backs and split their back 3 or just kick it dead to give our forwards a breather. If we're choosing to run the ball, always go for the grubber, because it will more likely than not result in a repeat set compared to a bomb this year. Hayne aside, we haven't been exceptional in regathering the ball off the bomb and so unless we're guaranteed to be able to trap them inside their dead ball area, we should be going for the grubber.
3. Backing up in support - Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but we're converting fewer of our linebreaks into tries purely because we have less options to pass to and this is resulting in stupid errors and bombed tries. We bombed a few easy tries purely because of this, as the player who has made the break isn't making the pass purely because of confidence in their support and it has made it easy for the opposition to shut us down. We should all be rushing up in support and pressure the opposition and converting the breaks into tries.
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